In For a Penny
by Thescarredman
Summary: Fifth in the series. While Serenity is under repair on Kaylee's homeworld, introductions are made, secrets are revealed, friendships are formed ... and Jayne becomes a lawman, sort of.
1. Chapter 1

The aged little Firefly III emerged from the Black into the pale light of Yellow Sun – pale at this distance, anyway; the ship's approximate destination was a ringed super-Jovian ten AU from its primary. The vessel dropped carefully into a gap in the giant's ring system, and gently boosted along that gap like a traveler taking to a well-worn path, which was exactly what it was: New Home was a shepherd moon that had swept all the debris out of its orbit eons before, making two middling-sized rings out of one big one. The ship approached the little world and eased into a trailing orbit, like an exhausted long-distance runner falling into a walk as he reaches the finish line. The drive shuddered as it shut down, sending shivers through the hull.

Hoban Washburn studied an instrument on his scarred panel, then another, then another, the corners of his mouth pulling farther down with each observation. "Mal…"

"If it's bad news," said the captain, "and I'm sure it is, can it wait till we're on the ground?"

"Yes and no."

Malcolm Reynolds rubbed a hand across his forehead, feeling a sticky layer of old sweat imbedded with grit. The climate control had begun malfunctioning early on the trip out, oscillating the inside temperature from low-normal to bake-a-cake. The water recycler had quit soon after, forcing the crew to forego showers to conserve drinking water. "Go hwon tong. Just say it."

"The old girl is twenty years overdue for her last hundred-month overhaul, Mal. If you want to land, I'm pretty sure I can get us down in one piece. But I won't take her up again until all the major systems have been gone over."

Captain Reynolds took two steps back and turned to look through the hatch. From here, he could see almost the length of the upper deck. Through the galley hatch, he saw Jayne seated at the table. The big merc appeared to be talking to someone in the food prep area, but Mal couldn't hear the voices. The hatches leading to the crews' quarters all looked shut, and the little telltales above each door confirmed it. Satisfied that no one had overheard the pilot's challenge to his authority, he turned back. "Is that right."

"I won't obey an order to crash the ship and kill us all." The look on the pilot's face told Mal he meant it. Hoban Washburn was no coward, but he knew his job, and he was stubborn as an old mule about some things. Wash had nearly been killed in a crash at the start of the War, one caused by a malfunction that was the result of a slipshod repair. The man's trust in Kaylee's patch jobs was a tribute to her talent. But patch jobs worked for only so long.

But there was a question of money involved. The cash box was pretty healthy right now, but they didn't have the coin for the kind of overhaul Wash was demanding, and never would. At least, not if they wanted to fuel and provision the ship. Of course, it didn't make sense to fuel the ship if it was never going to lift off again.

How cautious was Wash's estimate of the ship's condition? Temperamental thermostats and worn-out plumbing were no reason to ground a vessel, especially one so badly in need of steady work. And they had a cargo commitment and a delivery date to keep. He didn't like the idea of leaving Wash in the dirt on New Home, but the pilot had already weighed his options, and that forced Mal to consider his own.

He thought about his chances of hiring another pilot soon. He'd never get another with Wash's skill: the crazy strawhead had signed on for a hefty bonus of the non-monetary kind, one that the next man couldn't be offered, since losing Wash meant losing his wife as well; Zoë's personal loyalty to her old sergeant wouldn't stretch _that_ far, surely. And if the Washburns left _Serenity_ , that meant that Mal would be the last person aboard who could fly the old girl.

He thought about recruiting Inara as a backup. She was already a skillful shuttle driver: she was good at everything he'd seen her do, from fencing to making coffee - and many things he would never see her do, he had no doubt. Teaching her to navigate by beacon wouldn't be hard, and he was fair certain she'd be willing to take the helm when she wasn't … otherwise employed. But that would make her crew, by Mal's lights, and so he'd be obliged to pay her. And ten percent of _Serenity's_ net from a typical job probably wouldn't cover a meal at one her favorite restaurants. He imagined the look on her face as he offered her a handful of wrinkled banknotes from the cash box….

The ship _bounced._

Mal grabbed at an overhead brace out of reflex as the artificial gravity fluctuated again, making _Serenity_ feel like a small surface vessel bobbing in a big wave. Wash did likewise, and their eyes met, the same thought passing between them. If the AG or inertial field failed during hard burn, the two-hundred-gee acceleration would turn the crew to spaghetti sauce in a second, and the ship into a debris field a second after. Fresh sweat popped out on the captain's forehead as he quickly revisited his options.

"All right," he said. "Call traffic control for a parkin orbit, preferably the one we're in right now. Wave Sal, and tell her we'll try to find someone else to make pickup on her cargo."

"We're staying in orbit?"

"If the old girl's got no takeoffs left in her, we'd better make sure we set down someplace we can put her right." Mal reached for the intercom just as it clicked.

Kaylee's voice came through the speaker. " _Captain, we got some trouble here. The grav-_ "

"Never you mind that now," he said. "Kaylee, meet me at the port shuttle. We're payin a visit." _To Kaylee's_ _hometown, and Frye's Repair._

 _-0-_

Like every little world whose surface gravity had been artificially enhanced by terraforming, New Home had a steep gradient that could take an inattentive pilot by surprise on descent or takeoff. Wash's piloting was anything but inattentive. When the glide path suddenly steepened, he was already correcting, and the little shuttle continued its smooth approach with no more than a slight change in attitude. Mal ignored the ride and watched the scenery.

New Home had been a target for every rock and chunk of ice in its orbit for half a million years; from _Serenity_ and the shuttle at the beginning of their approach, a ghost of its pre-terraforming face had been plainly visible. Though green and well-endowed with water, the little world's geography was all circles and arcs: mountain ranges shaped like chains of crisscrossing crescents, round and half-round lakes, solitary peaks in the middle of deep circular valleys.

The terrain features shaped by planetary physics became less obvious as they dropped nearer the ground, and what jumped out was how pretty and unspoiled Kaylee's home was. They passed over blue water, thick woods, well-ordered farmsteads, and small towns – none, in Mal's estimation, harboring more than a couple thousand people.

Jayne said, "There a road more'n two lanes wide on this whole rock?"

"In Capital City," Kaylee replied, eyes fixed hungrily on the scenery visible through the glass. Her hand slipped into Simon's. "Main Street's got five. They have parades down it on Christmas and Unification Day. Real pretty – so I hear, I never been there. Oh!" She pointed with her free hand. "That's Millersburg! I recognize the town hall. We're almost there."

They followed Kaylee's finger another ten miles to a sprawling farmstead that looked to cover a thousand acres of cropland, grazing, and woodlot. The biggest outbuilding was a large sheetmetal structure adjacent to a neatly-arranged salvage yard. The little redhead directed them to a bare field beside it.

As they descended, Mal looked the junkyard over. On its oil-darkened expanse rested all manner of farm machinery, a score of what looked like passenger vehicles, a neat row of train cars … and a hand of ships, one a rusty old tailsitter larger than _Serenity,_ lying on its belly among the runabouts and shuttles. It reminded him of the one the salesman at the salvage yard on Boros had been trying to talk him into seven years ago, when he had spied the half-stripped old Firefly sitting at the end of the row. The ship below them – how had it come to be here? Was it an old fleet workhorse cycled out of service, or had it been a family ship like theirs, brought here for repairs and sold for scrap because it could go no further?

His fist and jaw clenched. He hadn't rescued the old girl from one boneyard just to abandon her at another.

The shuttle settled to the packed ground, and the engines wound quickly down. Before they fell silent, though, three men emerged from the building and began walking briskly toward them. Kaylee waved through the window at them, then hustled to the hatch, the others following.

The little redhead undogged the hatch, pushed it open, and fell squarely into her father's arms. The two younger men, presumably her brothers, looked on with wide grins as she held him tight, planted kisses on his cheeks, and laughed into his ear.

Mal had met James Frye, Kaylee's father, once before, and knew him to be a shrewd man. When the captain had offered Bester's little playmate a job as _Serenity's_ new mechanic, she had seemed delighted at the prospect but had informed him that she had to ask her pa, even though she looked – and behaved - years past age of consent for a farm world like New Home. Whereupon Captain Reynolds had been visited by said father, and had had to answer a number of sharp questions and endure a close scrutiny of the ship and its crew. He had also been obliged to make a number of guarantees about the little redhead's safety and welfare that he hadn't, in the strictest sense, kept. Or even in a sense not so strict.

Now that man, with his little girl held tight in his arms, lifted his eyes to give the captain a sharp look. That gaze travelled over Kaylee's other companions and their shuttle, reading clues about their state of affairs Mal would rather keep close, and the captain felt his hopes of any sort of negotiating position slip away. _Dealing with Patience was easier than this is going to be._

Frye released his daughter and took her by the shoulders, holding her at arm's length. "Sure, they haven't been overfeeding you. Your ma will be pushing food into your mouth as soon as you clear the front door."

"Oh, stop," the girl said, beaming.

The oldest boy – a grown man, in truth, except for his grin - dropped a hand on top of her head, mussing it. "Bout time you got back. Old Man Clyde is still waiting on that manure spreader you were workin on when you left."

Kaylee slapped him on the chest, a gesture that turned into a quick fierce hug. "Missed you too, Matt. 'Spect that'll change after half a day."

The other young man brought an arm around her from behind and pulled her away, then turned her, holding her waist in one hand and her wrist in the other, almost as if they were dancing. "You got nothing for me, Winnit? I'm the one fixed the spreader."

"Convinced him it was fixed, more like. How many times he brought it back since then?"

He laughed and kissed her full on the lips. Then all three of her kin turned toward Kaylee's run-withs, waiting.

"Cap'n Reynolds you know, Pa," she said. "The fella with the flower shirt is Wash, he's our pilot and husband to our first mate." While her brothers shook hands, she went on, "And this is Jayne Cobb."

"The man we've heard so much about. Welcome." The elder Frye extended a hand and pumped the big merc's vigorously.

"And… this is Simon."

"The man we've heard damn little about." Her father offered a hand, rather more cautiously than he had Jayne's. "But you're welcome as well."

Handshakes were traded all around. With Wash's gripped in his, Papa Frye said, "Should've brought your wife with you. There's plenty of room at our table."

Wash gave Mal a glance. "She'll be along later," he said. "I hope."

Zoë had taken being left in orbit with _Serenity_ with her usual stoic acceptance of Mal's orders, though she clearly hadn't liked it. But it seemed prudent to leave someone aboard who could fly the ship.

"Let's head up to the house," Kaylee's father suggested. "Your ma's vibrating in place to see you, and Will's gonna be home from school soon." He caught Mal's eye, and the two men hung back, trailing the others by a few steps.

As Kaylee and her brothers chattered and joked ahead, James Frye said, "Tell me about it." At Mal's frown he went on, "I can feel her ribs through two layers of cloth. None of you look like you've been eating too good – you can't fool a farmer bout that. Livin on Proteen, is my guess. She's careful bout what she puts in her post, but I know her well enough to read between the lines. And sometimes stories get back to us. I reckon I know what sort of life she has with you. You run a step ahead of trouble on good days, and on bad …" He drew a breath and let it out. "But she loves it, I see that too. So why did you come back? This don't feel like shore leave."

That stung a bit. _Serenity_ hadn't been back to New Home since they'd taken Kaylee on. Mal had intended to send her home for a visit, albeit a short one, while they were meeting up with Sal and loading her goods, but other concerns had crowded it out of his mind – until Wash had delivered his ultimatum. "We had a cargo to pick up," Mal said, telling the truth but not all of it, "but the deal fell through."

"And?"

The ex-sergeant hesitated. Jim Frye reminded him of some of the officers he'd served under, the capable ones. You lied to such men at your own peril. So he swallowed his pride and said, "We could use some work done. On our ship."

"That so?" The man frowned. "Then why'd you come down in your boat instead?"

Mal outlined the problem. "We don't work in cash much," he concluded. "Mostly we get by on barter and exchange of favors." He thought again of Patience – not because he felt this man was a danger; trading fire with a double dealer was far easier on the nerves than coming to an honest hardworking man for an undeserved favor. "Maybe you need goods hauled or-"

"This is gonna go one of two ways, Captain," the elder Frye said. "Either we can fix your ship or we can't. If we can, we'll do it, regardless of whether you pay us back. Or else we can't fix it, either because it can't be done or we'd go broke doing it. In which case you'll lose your mechanic, because Kaywinnit won't be leaving with you. Dong luh ma?"

Mal knew better than to argue. "Wu dong."

"All right then." He stopped, and Mal halted beside. "Can you fly that little boat?"

"Not like Wash, but well enough."

Simon glanced back at the two older men, and slowed. Wash followed his gaze. Kaylee took her fiancé by one arm, Jayne the other, and Wash pressed a palm into his back. Together they hustled him on to catch up with her brothers, who never looked back. They all disappeared around the big building.

"Well then," the elder Frye said. "Let's go up to your ship. I need to poke around and see what we're dealing with. Then, maybe, you can bring her down and the rest of your crew can join us for supper. I like to know the folks getting my charity." A line appeared between his eyes. "I know that look. 'Charity' ain't a dirty word on New Home, Captain Reynolds. Folks help one another out when they can, and don't look down on them reaching a hand out. It's not just Christian duty. Life is a practical joker, loves to turn people's luck around. You never know when it's gonna be your turn."

-0-

"Wo de ma," Jim Frye said two hours later, slumped in a chair in the galley with his hands around a cup of Kaylee's 'shine. "I thought it looked ratty when I first saw it, but…" He shook his head. "A man makes his livin from his machinery, Reynolds, he needs to keep it in repair. And when his life depends on it as well…" He glared across the table at Mal, who regarded him steadily over his own glass. "What have you been doing with your money, man?"

 _Serenity_ was still in orbit. The senior Frye had gone over the engine room, the bridge, the galley, and into utility spaces Mal hadn't even known the old girl had, while Mal and Zoë followed, sometimes answering questions, but mostly just looking on. Inara was gone in her shuttle, having made an 'appointment' with some wealthy Alliance officer in Capital City. The Shepherd had quickly got between their visitor and River, offered a brief welcome, and retired with her to his quarters; Mal judged that the old preacher had figured that Kaylee's pa might find it a mite unnerving to be shadowed by a girl who spouted nonsense one minute and sounded eerily like his daughter the next.

Mal lifted his glass. "Food and fuel, mostly, and always scrapin for both." He took a swallow, enduring the burn in exchange for a moment to gather his words. "It took longer to turn a profit on this venture than I ever expected. The big Core World lines are squeezing small-timers off the easiest runs, and it's taken a while to set up steady work." He set the glass down. "But things have been lookin up just lately. We get past this, I think we'll be okay."

"You start thinkin that, it's about the time something comes along and knocks you back to square one." Frye drained his glass and set it down as well. "All right. Here's the deal. We can set her right, I think, provided we can lay hands on a few odd parts. How much they cost depends on where we find them. Labor-wise, we're lookin at maybe a hundred fifty, hundred eighty hours. That's a week or so for three men, less if Kaylee pitches in and your pilot's as handy with tools as you say. But we have other work, on the farm and in the shop. The seasons don't wait, and we won't set payin customers aside for this. It might take awhile."

Mal said, resigned, "Define 'awhile'."

"Three weeks, at a guess. Unless those parts are harder to find than I expect." When Mal opened his mouth, the man lifted a palm and said, "We'll leave your ship fit to sleep in. But you'll take your meals at our table. That gosa in your larder can stay there. That's part of the deal."

Feeling small despite the man's prior assurances, Mal said, "I don't rightly know how we can pay you back for all this."

"Neither do I," said James Frye. "But I spose you won't rest till you find a way. You got more pride than is good for you, Captain."

"So I've been told." _By everybody from my own da to that weasel in the derby hat._


	2. Chapter 2

Jayne scoffed. "Ran away from home at sixteen to keep from spendin my life behind a plow. Since then, I been all around the 'Verse, and seen the best and worst of it. Ate off platinum plates, and chased jackals off a carcass for my dinner. I been near kilt more times than I can count - shot, stabbed, blown up – even got damn near sucked out a lock once. Had enough money go through my hands to buy a fleet of ships, not that I hung on to any of it. Drank enough booze to float a barge, and had me more whores-" He stopped and gave a little throat-clearing cough when he remembered that the listener sitting beside him was a school-age boy. "And now, twenny years later, after all them adventures, I'm farmin again." Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of the big tractor ten feet above the field, he turned the wheel, and the machine U-turned neatly, discing the stalks of the last harvest back under the earth. "Then again, if farmin back home had been like this, mebbe I wouldn't of left."

"It still gets plenty boring," said Will Frye. "But I'm not ready to leave home over it. Guess some folks aren't cut out for adventuring, Mister Cobb."

Jayne looked the boy over: Kaylee's red-brown hair, cut short; light green eyes that nobody else in the Frye household shared, unless they had been his mother's; face a little more chiseled than Kay-Kay's, the chin a bit squarer. It occurred to the big merc that the boy somewhat resembled Simon. _Good-looking kid. Probably just now getting hair in odd places,_ he thought, _and starting to look at girls different. And I bet they're looking back._ "If I learned anything while I was out in the back end of the 'Verse, I learned that adventure finds you more often than you find it, and in some damned unlikely places." _And at damned inconvenient times._

They rode in silence for a bit, with Jayne guiding the big machine up and down the rows. Will broke the quiet from time to time with a word of guidance or advice. Jayne mostly thought.

Dinner at the Fryes's, shortly after _Serenity_ had grounded the day before, had been an interesting affair, starting with Mama Frye asking the Shepherd to say Grace. Jayne had promptly folded his hands on the table and put on the pious face he usually reserved for judges, while watching the Captain remember that he wasn't on his boat, and that he needed these people's goodwill. Shepherd had shown mercy and not let the table blessing get too long or pointy; Mal had looked like he'd sat on one of Kaylee's jacks, but he'd bowed his head and kept silent, waiting for the soft chorus of 'Amens' before reaching for a roll.

The fare was the best Jayne had sat down to since dinner at Badger's; it was easy to see New Home was an ag world, and right prosperous. And Mama Frye was plainly used to feeding working men. He had loaded his plate, and loaded it again, trying hard to remember his table manners. Three weeks of eating like this, he thought, would have him all fattened up and ready for slaughter.

Dinner conversation was like the sound of _Serenity's_ engines: ever-changing in volume and pitch, with extra little bits thrown in from time to time, but always there; everybody didn't talk all the time, but the table didn't stay quiet for three seconds, not with fourteen people worling to fill the silence. Kaylee and the other Fryes did most of the talking, but not all. Topics covered everything under the sun and stars: young Will's school, work around the farm, weather – always a big subject with farmers – and doings in town. Jayne noticed that nobody brought up politics, though, and Papa Frye didn't press Kaylee much for news of what she'd been doing aboard ship.

Kaylee and Wash spent a lot of time talking with her father and older brothers about the ordering of the job to come on _Serenity._ Despite the old freighter's current state, Kaylee was proud of it as a new mother with her babe, and eager to show it off to her family. Papa Frye allowed that Fireflys were well-built ships, and a good design for certain types of work; a militarized version of the Ought-Three had been one of the chief workhorses of the Independent fleet. That drew Zoë into the conversation: she was ship-born and ex-Army besides, and had ridden more than one Cerberus on the Independent Army's long retreat. Her comments were interesting and kind, and carefully trimmed to keep them from coming out like war stories.

Mal surprised the Fryes –and a few of the crew- with knowledgeable talk about running cattle, something he'd done since he was a kid right up until he'd joined the Volunteers. Considering the way the Captain usually talked about 'prairie folk' and 'kissing the dirt,' he made it sound like it had been a good time, mostly, and seemed to look back on that time with affection. Jayne refrained from talking about his own childhood on the family farm, not wanting to upset his hosts at table.

The only true discomfort had come from the Tams. They sat side-by-side at the middle of the long table, as far as they could get from Mama and Papa Frye, who occupied the ends. Kaylee and the Shepherd flanked them. Inara sat opposite, scarce an arm's length away from the sibs, and deftly steered conversation away from uncomfortable topics. But Jayne had seen the measuring looks in the eyes of Jim Frye and his sons as they regarded the boy Kaylee had brought home to meet the family.

Jayne couldn't figure out who River had been copycatting that night, but it wasn't Kaylee. And if it was Zoë or Inara, the little reader was showing a side of one of those two women Jayne had never seen before. She'd been quiet enough, but there had seemed to be a lot going on behind those big spooky eyes. She'd smile at her plate, then leak a tear into it, then lift her head and stare at somebody as if they'd said something, only they hadn't. Sometimes she'd make a low comment to one of her table companions that would make them blink and look at one another. It had all made Jayne wonder what Simon's latest miracle drug might be doing to her, or if she was overdue for the next shot.

Today, all the crew not involved with repairing the ship were helping out around the farm. The only exception was the whore princess, who was out letting corporate execs and Alliance officers fill her purse, so to speak. She had offered to pitch in around the house, and to help pay for the purchase of necessaries for the ship - said offers having been politely refused by Missus Frye and Mal, respectively.

The captain's refusal was easy enough to figure. Even though their Companion had figured prominently in more than one of their capers, Mal still maintained that she was a paying passenger, not crew. Taking money from Inara for ship maintenance, Jayne figured, would incur a debt that would cost Cap'n Tightpants leverage in his endless arguments with her. He scoffed. As if Malcolm Reynolds had ever 'won' an engagement with Inara Serra – 'withdraw under fire' was more like it.

"Something funny?" Will asked.

"Hn. Just thinkin about how dumb smart people can be."

Kaylee's ma was a different story. Though there was no Chapter House on New Home, Jayne knew from Kaylee that Companions were respected here, so he doubted that the lady of the house shared Mal's jackass opinions about Inara's line of work. But he also knew that the elder Fryes were both serious about their shares of the task load around their homestead; Jayne figured that Missus Frye was less worried about a high-priced call girl sharing their table and trading smiles with her menfolk than she was about some Core-bred fancy girl rearranging the flowers in her vases and feng shui'ing her furniture.

"Mister Cobb, do you know my father?"

The tractor slowed for a moment before Jayne got his wits back. "Why would you think I know your pa?"

The boy shrugged. "Nobody talks about him. Not my family, not the neighbors, nobody. They don't talk much about my mother either. I know she was Aunt Kaylee's older sister, and she disappeared when I was a year old. It's pretty clear that something happened to her before I was born. I figure he left her when she told him she was having a baby, and it broke her heart." He shifted in the seat. "Kaylee talks so fond of you in her post, and she left so quick when your ship came to port, I thought maybe she knew you from somewhere before, and went to be with you. And if you known each other long enough …"

"Then I'd know who your pa was. Sorry, kid. I met her on the ship when I hired on."

Will nodded and turned back to the windshield. "If only they'd talk to me about it."

"Well …" He hesitated. "If they're keepin it from ya, they must have a good reason. That means there's something important about it. And _that_ means that they're sure to tell you someday, when they think you're ready and need to know." His advice sounded about as satisfying as weak tea, and he imagined the kid had heard much the same from others he'd asked. Will looked up at Jayne with troubled eyes, and the merc was sure that the boy realized that the man beside him knew more than he was telling.

-0-

 _Serenity_ was a ship with a long and varied history. She had changed hands at least four times since coming out of the yard, River was certain, and each new crew and owner had left their mark for discerning eyes to find, from the decorations in the galley, and the graffiti in the access spaces, to the odd items left behind in the smugglers' holes. River had explored every centimeter of the old girl's interior and knew them all. Her familiarity with the ship's seldom-used and hard-to-reach places had made her a natural choice for tracing wires throughout the ship - a job that was essential to proper diagnosis and repair, since Kaylee hadn't been the first of the old Firefly's mechanics to mend her with make-do parts and workarounds.

River was standing on a ladder leading up through an opening in the ceiling to an overhead access space, trying to match the faded color-coding on a bundle of wires in its raceway to a diagram in a thick binder that Papa Frye had dug up. So far, scarcely half of the wires matched. The interesting ones were those that were spliced mid-run with different colored wire; those she had to track to their sources, sometimes going from one color to another to another before she reached a module whose coding she could trust. It was a tedious and undemanding job for a person of River Tam's gifts, but it was an utterly necessary one, and she was the best qualified. And it was a job everyone felt comfortable entrusting to her; even after her recent improvements, a few of her crewmates were still leery around her when she had a sharp object in her hand, and wouldn't let her take a turn at galley duty.

In truth, River didn't mind the assignment. The solitude allowed her to relax and let her guard down a bit. Even on a world as thinly settled as New Home, the million voices were close and pressing, and she needed filters to keep from being swept away. But using her analogue of Kaylee's perception of reality, while the easiest of River's options, seemed likely to alarm the redheaded mechanic's family. Inara's filters were her usual second choice, but entailed hazards of their own around a pair of mating-age males who were already looking at her with speculative eyes. Zoë filters were safe enough, but difficult to construct and maintain. Spending her time mostly alone on the ship, doing Kaylee jobs in a Kaylee state of mind, halved the difficulty of maintaining her sanity.

The simple work allowed her mind to wander, both inside her head and far beyond it. Presently River was gathering and collating impressions of the farm and the people on it. She had already sampled all its inhabitants, from the family and hired hands down to the simple thoughts and desires of its livestock and vermin. Now, she amused herself comparing and contrasting the Fryes and the crew, arranging them on opposite sides of her mind like pieces on a chess board: Papa Frye to Mal, Mama Frye to Zoë, Matt to Wash. Kaylee stood on both sides of the board, of course, in two versions subtly different on farm and ship.

Other pairings were less clear. Rosh had a sort of Jayne flavor to him that intrigued her, but the resemblance was no closer than that between a watchdog and a wolf. He didn't smell right, either for an ape-man merc or a Frye. And the way he treated Kaylee didn't seem very brotherly, though she didn't seem to mind.

She supposed that Will, Kaylee's little brother, was most closely matched to River herself. There were similarities besides them each being youngest. The boy was different from the other males in the Frye household, looking at the world through different eyes. Not that he had trouble fitting in; his sibs and parents treated him properly, and with love. But River understood secrets, and in their glances and in the pauses in their conversations, she saw that there was something about Will Frye that his family kept close - his full parentage, likely, and the circumstances of his conception.

The Shepherd had no equivalent on the homestead – he was as out-of-place there as a horse in a rowboat. He had offered his help around the farm, but they hadn't found anything suitable for him yet. He had claimed to be 'the student of a carpenter,' but his attempt to mend a wall in the corn crib had left the brothers smiling behind their hands. Although, she thought, if their herds had been troubled by wolves - or rustlers - they would have needed only to take the hammer from Derrial Book's hand and give him a rifle.

Her reverie was suddenly interrupted. River had only a brief image of herself seen through another's eyes: a rear view, standing on the ladder in a pair of Kaylee's coveralls, her upper half invisible above the opening. Then a pair of hands gripped her hips, and she experienced a strange sort of tactile déjà vu: the hands on her felt warm and familiar, although the man they belonged to had never touched her before.

"I thought you had a nigh perfect figure when you left," Rosh said. "But I reckon losing a few pounds didn't hurt that saucy little pigu none." His fingers curled around her hipbones. "Hm, you got handles now. Better grip."

Without thinking about it, River set aside her pliers and reached down through the hole. She slapped at his hand, not hard enough to sting. "Stop it."

"That what you tell ol' Simon?" His hands slipped off her. "Bet not. How'd you hook up with a nance like that anyway? From all your post, I thought you were set on this Jayne fella."

"It didn't work out," River said quietly. "And Simon's not a nance, he just likes things neat."

"If you say so," he said doubtfully. "Seems kind of stuck-up. His sister, too. A real lamei, but you can tell by the way she looks right through you she thinks she's better than us outworld grubs. Bet she's off somewhere polishin her nails while the rest of us are workin." Rosh wound his arms around her, hugging her hips; his cheek pressed against the small of her back. "We ain't talked alone since you got back, Winnit. Whyn'cha come down so we can do this face-to-face? Bein up in that box makes your voice sound funny."

"Ahem." Kaylee's voice, somewhere behind them.

Rosh jerked, and his embrace vanished. "Wo di tien ah," he said in a hushed voice.

River descended the three rungs to the floor and turned to regard Rosh Frye's burning face and Kaylee's smirking one.

Rosh looked like a convicted man waiting for his sentence. "I'm _so_ humped."

"You wish," his sister said, amused.

River looked at Rosh, but spoke to Kaylee. "He was your first."

All the color drained from the boy's face. "Win, you _told_?"

"She's a hard person to keep secrets from," Kaylee said, catching River's eyes. "But don't fret. She's got plenty of her own. She'll keep ours. She's my sister now, same as you're my brother." Her gaze shifted to the distraught boy. "Go on now. Got less than half an hour till supper, and we'll prolly want to spend it all talking about you." She made a shooing gesture, and he left, his eyes on the two women until he cleared the door, as if afraid to turn his back on them.

The redheaded girl turned to River. "So, how much explainin do I need to do?"

"He's not blood," River said. "A neighbor, a friend of your pa, his son. He was fourteen, you were twelve. Almost thirteen," she amended quickly as Kaylee's eyebrows lowered.

"I was already startin to look like a real girl by then," Kaylee said, "bumps and everything. And I'm easy enough on the eyes. I shoulda had any other young girl's chance to learn about being a woman, and my pick of curious boys to help. But that day in the woods was only two years gone. Will was just outta diapers, and there were still folks searchin the woods and the creek bottoms for my sister Mina. Most of the older boys seemed kinda scared of me, specially Matt's friends. I guess they thought I might go all Willamina on em if they touched my hair or stole a kiss."

She gazed at the wall, and River caught a brief image: a pair of young men with flared nostrils exchanging words too low to hear, then turning away. "Those were the good ones. The pastor's son and a couple others looked at me and Mina like we were tainted meat. Like what happened to us was our fault somehow, or maybe the big man had given us something catching."

"You didn't deserve to be shunned for what happened to you. They were jibas."

"I know. I think Pa saw it too. The family switched churches a month after we were rescued." Kaylee went on, "And there were a few … well, they kinda scared me." Another image, a young man looking down on her with hooded eyes, speculative eyes. "I swear, it was like what happened to me … _attracted_ them. None of them ever got in trouble over a girl, far as I know, and one of em's even married, with kids. But I'll never stay alone in a room with him.

"Rosh was different. Whether we were alone or with folks, he treated me like a friend. We horsed around and traded stories and insults. He'd punch me in the shoulder one minute and hug me the next." She smiled. "After a while, the hugs sorta crowded out the punches, and we started spendin time up in the hayloft together. We kissed for the first time up there. Did a lotta things for the first time up there. And I never once thought of the bad man while we were doin em."

"He lost his parents right after. A fire, I think."

"Ayuh. Their house. They think it started in the kitchen. The father ran inside after his wife, and the roof came down on both of them. Rosh was in school. Ma and Pa took him in, told me and Matt we had a new brother."

"Awkward?"

"Coulda been worse. If my folks had caught us before the fire, Pa woulda took Rosh's hide half off. Then he woulda told Rosh's pa so he could finish the job. When he lost his folks, Pa would have taken him in anyway. He just would have watched us more careful." She went on, "We didn't really talk about it, but once Rosh was sleepin under our roof and Pa was callin him 'son,' we were done sneakin off to the hayloft. We got over it, and moved on." The redhead smiled. "He still gets kinda frisky with me sometimes, just to tell me he remembers. But I couldn't ask for a better brother. And I'm thinking he's pash about my beau's little sister."

River returned the smile. "Jayne is interested in him, too. I think they'll be having a talk soon."

-0-

"Damn it, Jim," Simon said, wiping perspiration from his forehead and leaving behind a black smear. "I'm a doctor, not a tractor mechanic."

"It's a harvester, not a tractor. And you're not doin so bad." Jim Frye, a few feet away, peered into an adjacent access panel on the big machine as he stripped six inches of cladding from a thick black cable in his hands, exposing several different-colored wires. "You're unschooled, but you've got good hands."

Simon thought that Kaylee's father was being rather charitable. His part of the repair job had mostly been removing various components at Jim's direction; he was sure a monkey could be trained to do the job as well. And he was sure that the elder Frye was capable of working just as efficiently alone. That left just one reason for his request for Simon's help on a task far removed from the parked Firefly where his daughter was working. He said, "I really don't see how I could be doing this wrong."

"You'd be surprised. There's an art to doing delicate work inside a little opening like this. You plan it out and take it a step at a time so you don't forget anything. It takes patience and attention to detail." He stripped a finger's width of colored insulation from the end of each wire and began to thread the end of the cable into the opening. "Must be summat like surgery."

"Somewhat," Simon agreed, setting down on a workbench the tool and fasteners and little module he had just removed from the big machine's innards. "But you never let anyone inside an incision who doesn't know his way around. I'd feel a lot more confident if I knew what all the little wires and boxes I'm handling actually do. Maybe then the hairs on the back of my neck wouldn't rise up when I touch a frayed cable."

"Frayed cable?" Alarm touched the man's voice. "Where?"

Simon frowned. "Coming out of the square module about sixty centimeters in, the one secured to the front wall with a row of fasteners through a flange along the bottom. The cable comes out the bottom of the inboard side and takes a sharp bend upward."

Kaylee's father rummaged in a toolbox and produced a miniature camera on a flexible extension. He inserted it into the panel and guided it carefully, turning this way and that as he watched a tiny screen in his hand. After a bit, he stopped. "Gorry. Will you lookit that."

Simon studied the image: a finger-thick yellow cable, scraped bare of insulation near where it entered the box. Several stray wires from the braided cable had not been inserted into the entry clamp on the box's housing, and their hair-fine ends were resting against the housing.

"Good thing we cut the power first," the man said. "You'd have touched it then, you wouldn't of liked it much. See those black marks? Been sparking some, I'd say." He pulled off his cap and scratched his head. "Thing is, there's really nothing for it to rub against, so how did the cladding get scraped off?"

"Well…" Simon reached inside the panel door and snaked his hand through the maze of wires and assemblies until his elbow was inside as well, and he could see the image of his hand on the display, touching the module. He began feeling around under it, out of sight of the camera. Presently he found what he was looking for, withdrew his arm and showed Jim a pinch of long yellow shavings. "At a guess, when it was reinstalled. The module looks much cleaner than the surrounding parts. I'd say it's a recent replacement."

"Bet your pigu it is. Olaf told me this harvester's been acting up for three weeks. He must've hired somebody else on the cheap to do some work first, then brought it to me when his shade-tree mechanic messed it up. Pop those fasteners so we can get at the connection." He returned to his work.

Simon applied himself to the module cover, now working by sight as well as touch, and had it off in a couple of minutes despite the cramped access. "Open."

"Quick work. Didn't even lose a screw?" As the man peered at the image, he said, "How come Jayne calls you Three Percent?"

 _Here it comes_ , Simon thought. "I told him once that I graduated in the top three percent of my class at medical school."

"Huh." James's eyes were fixed on the little screen as he reached past Simon to work a pair of pliers into the opening. He said, almost to himself, "You're smart. She doesn't go for smart, usually."

"Sir," he said, feeling a band tighten around his chest. "We're very serious about each other."

"Serious. That's something." He disconnected the damaged cable and pulled it free. "Follow me, and I'll show you where we keep the wire spools." As they walked together through the big repair shed, he said, "So. How did you meet?"

"When we took ship for Boros."

"Who do you know on Boros?"

"No one. It was just the next stop."

"Well, then, where were you bound?"

"It was an open-ended itinerary."

"And now you're the ship's medic?"

"Among other things."

"I got a feeling you didn't hire into that job."

"No." Simon's mouth went dry at the thought of telling Kaylee's father about his first medical emergency aboard the tramp freighter. "We were passengers at first, but…" He trailed off, hoping the man wouldn't press.

"That girl really your sister?"

"Yes," he said. "She's … not well."

They reached a tall metal stand, from which hung rows of wire spools of various sizes. Kaylee's father selected one and began pulling out a length of thick yellow cable. "You keep answerin like a witness on the stand, son, this is gonna take awhile."

 _You marry a woman, you marry her family._ Simon said, "Jim, how do you feel about the Alliance?"

Jim Frye gave him a sidelong glance. "Like that?" He compared the wire he had unrolled to the damaged one, cut it to length, and cleaned the ends while Simon stood by, mouth still dry. Eventually the man started back, wire in hand. "New Home got occupied early in the War, and nobody made much fuss about it. Folks around here are more worried about the price of grain on Hera than they are about who's appointing the judges in Capital City. The independence movement here never got past being an excuse for the local hooligans to paint up the courthouse wall of a night."

They reached the harvester, and Jim began to work the cable into the open panel. "Alliance doesn't much care about us, either. It claims supreme jurisdiction, of course, and it left a garrison after the War. But mostly the uniforms stay close to Federal property and the Core World companies that do business here. Folks on New Home pretty much look after themselves, and each other. So long as our local lawmen and politicians don't get too big for their britches, the Alliance leaves us alone." The wire's end reached the module, and he began carefully to work it into the entry clamp. "But it seems to me it's got some funny ideas about what's important, and about what's right and wrong."

Simon began talking, haltingly at first, then gathering speed and force. Before he was done, the work on the harvester had been abandoned, and the men sat on stools at the repair bench inside the shed, sipping fruit juice as the shadows through the big open doorway shifted and lengthened.

"Well," the man said, staring into his glass. "And Reynolds has been sheltering you, for Kaywinnit's sake?"

"I'm not sure he could tell you why, really. He was ready to turn me in, at first, until he discovered River. Then he was going to dump us on a wild world where we might not have stayed free and unhurt for a day, just wash his hands of us. But he didn't. Instead he shot a man to protect us, and offered us a place on his ship." Simon shrugged. "He's a complicated man."

"But on balance he's a good one, I think. Else I never woulda let her go with him in the first place." Jim stood. "She's my baby, and I missed her every minute she was gone. But she's also my wild child, the restless one trouble's always finding, and the sooner I get her and all of you a way off this world, the better off she'll be."

-0-

"You're enjoying this." Zoë guided her horse along the mesh fence that bordered the Frye pastureland, looking ahead to where it rose over a hill and disappeared.

Mal, riding beside on the other side of the fence, took a deep breath of uncanned air and let it out. "It's somewhat of a change."

"Take you back?"

"Some. Shadow's not as green. You couldn't ride fence for a day without fillin your nose with dust. But the work's the same. How bout you?"

"Never sat a horse before the War."

Mal hid his surprise. He had known Zoë was ship-born, but… "Not even durin your carefree girlhood as a prairie chick?"

"On Sutter?" She scoffed. "I didn't ride a horse, or drive a wagon. If I left the house alone, I went on foot, and any man I met had a right to ask me my business, and it had better be my uncle's. I was freer in the Army."

They crested the hill and paused, looking down. The fence meandered down to a stand of mature trees, wide-spaced and parklike. One of them had toppled, and looked to be lying across the fenceline. Mal flicked the reins and sent his mare down the hill.

They entered the wood. Sure enough, the tree lay across the fence, mashing the fabric to the ground and bending the steel posts inward. They dismounted, hobbled their mounts to graze in the cool grass, and unpacked their woodcutting gear. Mal said, "So what made you leave behind all the comforts for three days and nights of riding fence?"

Zoë produced a hatchet and began brushing out the trunk. "If not for this, I'd have ended up in the kitchen."

"Huh," he said. Zoë had an unexplained hatred of the womanly arts. She was a fine cook, but Mal could count on one hand the number of times he'd had a scratch-cooked meal from her; Kaylee cheerfully took the first mate's share of galley duty aboard ship. But was that the real reason she was here? He passed the cutting bar over the fence and took the hatchet from her. "Wash okay with this?"

Zoë gave him a dark look. "You gonna talk or work?" She fired up the cutter and dropped it to the trunk, and its buzzing whine put an end to conversation.

So they'd been fighting, he thought. There hadn't been any hints of jealousy on Wash's part since Niska's skyplex, but Mal thought it only natural that Zoë's husband would think small of his wife leaving him for three days to play cowboy while he went crawling through _Serenity's_ maintenance spaces. Or … had he told her of the ultimatum he'd given the captain?

 _Call him 'sir' a lot,_ Wash had once suggested sourly to his wife. _He likes that._ Mal scoffed as he applied the hatchet to the limbs on his end of the tree. He could also count on one hand the number of times she'd called him _sir_ out of hearing of the others; all that deference just suited her notions of ship's discipline, was all. When they were private, she often talked to him as if he was a wayward child, just like when they were sergeant and corporal during the War.

And _that_ , he thought, was likely the real reason they were out here alone together. Sooner or later over the next couple days, Mal was going to get an earful that his mate didn't want anyone else to hear.

Zoë finished cutting her half of the trunk into manageable sections and shut off the bar. As she passed it over the fence, she said, "You give any thought to how we're gonna pay these folks back?"

 _And there it is_ , he thought. _Guess it's going to be sooner than later._ "You don't think we're makin a down payment right now?" It was his turn to fire up the cutter and end the talk, mostly to give himself time to search for a better answer. But Mal had started life as a rancher, and wasn't hopeful about his prospects of finding one: he knew what he and Zoë and the others were doing here. By the time he had sectioned his half of the tree and shut off the bar, one still hadn't presented itself.

Zoë kicked the log section nearest the fence and sent it rolling away. Then she stuck a boot toe into the collapsed fabric of the fence, squatted, and gripped the top in both hands. She straightened with an effort, pulling the mesh into something resembling a fence again, while Mal applied a come-along to the bent posts, stretching the abused fencing as they righted. Mal went on, "I know this isn't much-"

"It isn't anything," she said, as she grasped the broken ends of the stretched-out strand of barbed wire that ran across the top with a pair of pliers, then twisted them together. "These are the sort of set-aside chores you put by for between harvest and planting. We're not making these folks' lives any easier, we're just freeing them up to work on our ship. If we'd never come here, they'd be working shorter hours than they are now, I expect." She bent to the pack at her feet. "Least the two of us are doing something we know needs done. I think Kaylee's pa is giving the others make-work just to make them feel useful." Pulling out a canteen, she uncapped it, took a deep pull, and offered it across the fence. "We can't leave with this hanging over our heads. Before we lift, we need to have a plan at least for clearing the debt."

Mal took the proffered canteen from her hand. "I'll come up with something. Might be risky."

"Just so long as we don't have to rob a train."

 **Author's note: a time or three in my stories, I've mentioned the 'Cerberus,' a class of gunboat based on the Firefly model flown by our heroes. This isn't my creation, but that of the folks at Quantum Mechanix, an online store specializing in sci-fi series items. They'll sell you a poster of the very dangerous-looking ship for a fair price, along with any number of Firefly-related stuff.**


	3. Chapter 3

Looking for a prybar, Kaylee stepped into the shed and found her coverall-clad beau standing at the workbench, cursing in Chinese as he applied a screwdriver to the cover of a sooty-looking control module. He leaned hard into his work, almost lying on the screwdriver as he twisted the handle back and forth. Just as she opened her mouth to caution him, the cover popped open. He fell forward, throwing out his hands to keep from hitting the work surface with his head, and the cover, module and screwdriver went skittering across the bench and disappeared over the edge in a spray of loose fasteners. Kaylee laughed, and Simon turned to her, looking sheepish.

Kaylee licked her thumb and rubbed away a spot of grease on Simon's cheek. "Never thought I'd see the day, Simon Tam. You look like a real mechanic. Sound like one too."

He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. She pulled it free and slid her fingers around the back of his head and brought their faces together. Her other hand found its way to the small of his back and points south, pressing him hard against her.

Thirty seconds later, she pulled her face back an inch to catch her breath, feeling a pleasant stiffness pushing against her lower belly. "They're still workin inside the ship," she said, voice husky. "But the hayloft's closer anyway."

"Kaylee-"

"Ma and Pa like you. Your pa likes me. How many more steps has this dance got?"

Knuckles rapped on the sheet metal beside the open door. "Kaylee,'" Matt said. "The Hensons are here."

"What! Where?"

"In the kitchen, with Ma and Pa."

The little redhead turned for the door, paused, and grabbed Simon's wrist. "Come on."

Kaylee emerged into the hazy sunlight, still towing him behind her. The eldest brother fell in step beside them, glancing at Simon. "Win, do you-"

"He knows all about it, Matt."

"Shiia. Be there in a bit." He separated from them, headed for a nearby shed.

Simon said, "What is it I know all about?"

"The Hensons are the men who got me and Mina out of that pit," she said.

They went through the kitchen door to find Jim and Stella Frye standing at the table in conversation with three big scruffy men in travel-stained clothing – just as Kaylee remembered them. She gave a little cry and wrapped arms around Royce, the father. "Didn't dare hope I'd see you while I was here." She released him and turned to his sons, Dell and Garrod, and threw her arms around their necks, one after the other. "Tell me you're stayin for supper."

The man in her arms glanced over her shoulder at Simon. "Seems like there might not be room at the table."

Jim Frye made a rude sound. "Tsai bu shir. Matt's dragging out the planks and sawhorses, and Rosh and Will should be pitching the canvas in the yard. We're gonna throw us a party."

Mrs. Frye said, "Our other guests are sleeping on their ship, so we've got empty beds in the house, too." She added, not too pointedly, "And plenty of hot water, if you three want to clean up and change before supper."

-0-

Nightfall on New Home, as on many terraformed worlds, was somewhat of a disappointment to a man who had seen real sunsets on worlds like Sihnon and Londinium: no big red-orange ball sinking toward the horizon lighting the undersides of the clouds, no shifting palette of colors in the sky. The hazy patch of brightness that covered a quarter of the blue-gray sky simply dimmed and went out as the lightsats shifted their attention to another part of the little world.

There was still a little light left in the sky. The atmospheric shield scattered starlight into a ghostly background glow. Yellow Sun looked like a flashlight beam low on the horizon. Brightest was a fuzzy line as wide as Jayne's thumb that cut diagonally across the sky. "What's that?"

"Inner ring," said Garrod Henson, the elder brother, now clean-shaven and dressed in clothing worn but clean. They stood together just outside the big lighted canopy that sheltered the makeshift tables. He lifted his glass to his lips. "If you squint, you might see crescent Jove behind it. When it's full, it's bright enough to read by."

Jayne frowned. "What would ya read by it?"

The man seemed taken back a moment, then said, "Maps. Books. Love letters, maybe." He took another swallow, and pointed with his chin at _Serenity_ , silhouetted dimly against the sky. "So, you all are Kaylee's crew."

"Most of em. The others are off just now." Jayne turned in a half circle, taking in the rest of the party. It was quite a gathering. Besides the Fryes, the Hensons, and the crew, the hired farmhands who usually went home at suppertime had come back, some of them bringing family of their own. All told, there must be thirty people sitting and standing under the tent or wandering around in the dark just beyond it.

One place they weren't wandering, despite all curiosity, was inside the ship: Jayne had seen the hatches were shut tight before the festivities got underway. He'd thought about locking Simon and River up inside, but couldn't think of an excuse, or a way to keep them there. He just hoped none of the strangers talking to Simon and Kaylee, or watching River dance to Papa Frye's fiddle, ever read wanted posters.

Mal had checked in a few minutes before and exchanged words with him before turning off the radio to spare the charge. Zoë hadn't come on to speak with the little man, which Jayne thought peculiar, but he didn't question. He'd always wondered just how close Zoë and Mal had been during the War; maybe riding fence was giving them a chance to revisit old times.

His eye swept the inside of the tent, looking for the rest of his people. Mal hadn't exactly put him in charge of things while he was gone, and he wasn't about to start talking about the 'chain of command' again, but who else was there? Wash? The idea made Jayne smile; might as well give the job to Inara – she was more used to bossing people around. The Shepherd might do, but he would never accept the job. So it fell on him to do the worrying.

Simon and Kaylee stood among a group of girls her age in a spot where the doctor could keep an eye on River. Jayne figured the little redhead's girlfriends were oohing and ahhing over her new man, and wondering if she had finally settled down. Inara and the Shepherd were seated together near the middle of the room, talking to anyone who sat down with them but not mingling. Wash stood near the buffet and the drinks, talking with a brace of hungry-looking women who hung on his every word: spaceship pilots were romantic characters on worlds like New Home, where folks often lived and died a day's walk from where they were born. In all, it looked like everybody was having fun, and the party not likely to end with broken furniture and the crew running for their ship.

His eye lighted on the corner where Rosh Frye sat drinking alone, as far from his Pa's fiddle as possible. It could be the boy was no fan of music, but the quick glances he kept flicking toward the crazy girl, dancing alone like a fairy in a circle of admirers, seemed a more likely reason. It seemed strange. The boy hadn't seemed shy before; in fact, he'd seemed so far from shy around River that Jayne had thought about taking him aside for a talk. Now the kid was avoiding her, seemed like…

 _No._ He wasn't just avoiding her. Now Jayne realized what was bothering him. Rosh was looking at River just the way Jayne had, after Ariel. Jayne wouldn't believe the boy had entertained notions of selling out his sister's friends, but there was guilt in that look, and worry. Had he made a pass, or something like? Maybe they should have a little talk after all…

Wash came wobbling up to them, a large tumbler full of squeeze in his hand. Jayne looked at the stubble on the pilot's cheeks and reflected that, with no ship to fly and his wife gone, the strawhead was getting a little sloppy. Wash hoisted his glass. "Now I know where Kaylee gets her recipes. Way better'n mudder's milk. Or the stuff Jayne bought from that blind guy."

"Think you've had enough." Kaylee deftly removed the glass from his hand. "Land somewhere. And if a curly-haired blonde _so_ tall sits down and bumps hips, better mention your wife before she starts laying hands on you."

When the pilot tottered off, Kaylee looped elbows with Garrod. "Haven't had a chance to talk to any of you since you got here," she said. "What brings you out this way?"

"Prospecting, as usual," he said. "Between stakes just now. Worked out a lode a few weeks back, and decided to try our luck out this way."

"Really? What was your last strike?"

He raised his glass to his mouth. "Up Valeris way. Seventy tons, nickel-iron."

The little redhead paused. "Well. I'm sure you'll hit something good out there."

"One can hope. How long are you staying?"

"Couple-three weeks. Maybe you'll be back before then."

"I hope not, it'd mean we didn't find anything." He drained his glass. "Spect we'll stay a day, getting supplies together, then head out. Anybody want a drink?"

After Gerrod left, Jayne said to Kaylee, "What is it?"

She shook her head. "Unless you're some big mining outfit, the only mineral deposits on New Home are ones that fell out of the sky in chunks a zillion years ago. You find one, dig it up, sell it, and move on to the next. All kinds of different ores in em - silicon, manganese, iridium – sometimes gold, even. A really good one will set small-timers like the Hensons for months, give em plenty of coin to spend while they find another one." She watched Gerrod, glass now full, head away to another group. "But nickel-iron's hardly worth more than dirt. Prospectors pass it by. If they're working lodes like that, they must be as down on their luck as we are."

Papa Henson – Royce, Jayne thought the man's name was – came out from under the tent with Kaylee's ma. It occurred to Jayne that, after taking four meals at her table, he still didn't know her first name; she was 'Missus Frye' or 'Ma'am' to the hands and 'Ma' to everyone else, even Papa Frye. The two seemed deep in conversation, close enough to lay hands, voices too soft to hear. But Papa Frye was playing a reel in the tent, looking right at them while he grinned at River's high-stepping, so Jayne put aside his first impression. There were other things besides _that_ that might draw two people close.

A faint whine caught Jayne's attention. "You hear that?" The sound swelled as he spoke. Now, off to the east, over the trees, he could see blinking nav lights in the dark sky, headed their way.

"Aircar." Kaylee's apprehension confirmed his guess that such a visit likely meant trouble; Jayne doubted that many citizens owned aircars. That it was approaching unannounced and uninvited and under cover of darkness had his hand brushing his hip and casting about for the rest of his crew. Papa Frye set aside his fiddle. He and his wife came up to stand beside their daughter, Pa Henson bringing up the rear.

The car slowed as it approached, its outlines becoming a little clearer, and the rest of the party paused to look. Its landing lights came on, bathing the flat ground between _Serenity_ and where they stood, and some of that light reflected upward to illuminate the craft.

"Civvy," Kaylee said with relief. "Pretty fancy rig, too."

It settled to the ground, and its lights went out as the engines wound down. Two occupants got out and approached the party. They were better-dressed than the working folk of the Frye spread, but not in uniforms or the sort of suits that Core World business types preferred; Jayne took them for locals. They hesitated and looked around as they approached, which Jayne took for another good sign: officials would act more sure of themselves, and folk looking for a fight would be looking harder at the crowd and closing quicker.

The visitors stopped a few paces from the tent, just close enough to show clearly in the light from the lamps on the tables. Papa Frye stepped forward to meet them.

"Sorry to disturb your party," one of them said. "This Frye's Repair?"

"It is," said the patriarch, "but it's a bad time to do business. Like you said, you're interrupting a party."

"Sorry," he said again. "But, for the sort of business I'm here for, this is the best time."

The elder Frye scowled, seeming about to send the stranger off, but Jayne, on a sudden hunch, said, "What kinda business is that?"

"A job offer." He nodded toward the ship. "If those are the folk I've heard about."

Jayne said, "That depends on what you heard. Ship's in for repairs. Not takin cargo or passengers."

"It's not the ship I want to hire."

Mal's injunction on mercenary work was still firm, but constant refusals hadn't slowed down the offers any; in fact, after the sniper attack that had ended that jiba Bien's career, they'd gotten even more bothersome, just as that lawman Hoya had predicted. "Well, then, what do ya think we can do for you?"

The man took a deep breath. "My name is Simon Ames. This is my son Roderick."

Royce broke in, " _The_ Simon Ames? The mining fella?" At the man's nod, the elder Henson went on, "Your operation is making it damned hard for an independent prospector to make a living. Everywhere we go, your teams have got there first and staked your claim."

"Bizui," said Mama Frye. "I know you got cause, but you've been out of the world, Royce, so you haven't heard bout this man's troubles." She went on, "Would you like a drink? Or some food?"

"Thank you, ma'am, the offer means a lot, but no. Best I state my business and be gone before I'm missed." He said, more quietly, "I have a little girl. Ten years old." He produced a small capture and activated it: a little girl playing at some kind of sports match, running down a field with a bunch of sprats the same age, grinning and yelling with her hair flying out behind her. "Amadine. We call her Amy. She disappeared a week ago."

"Kaywinnit," said Papa Frye, "think you better go check on your boy."

Ames's eyes followed her back to the tent. "She the one?"

"The one who lived through it." Papa Frye gave Jayne a glance; the merc nodded. _I know._

"Sorry to bring this to you like this."

Jim Frye shook his head, brushing aside Ames's apology. "You think she was taken?"

"If she wasn't, she'd be home by now. She had no reason to run off, and my people would have found anyone who wanted to be found. But … it happened at Founder's Park."

The Fryes' faces turned to stone. At Jayne's look, Royce Henson said, "Founder's Park backs up against The Wood."

Jayne heard the capital letters in the man's voice. "This 'Wood' is somethin special?"

Jim Frye nodded. "Founder's Park is a hundred miles from here. But it's the same forest runs by the school a mile from our front door. Biggest forest on New Home, thousands of square miles. A man can go in there and never be found."

And the hundan who had stolen Kaylee and her sister never had been.

"I hope that's not true," Said Ames. "I was told the prospectors who found your girls are in town. That you, mister?"

"It is," said Royce. "But we weren't looking for them. Didn't even know they were missing, we'd been out there so long. Just luck."

"But you know The Wood. You've lived in it off and on for years, I hear."

"You could spend half your life in it and not know it all. So that's what you're here for? A search party?"

"Partly. But if there's any chance her kidnapper is the same man who took the Frye girls, I want the searchers to have someone along who knows how to handle bad men." He turned to Jayne. "And that's why I need to talk to you as well, Captain."

Jayne opened his mouth and shut it. Hell, he was doing the gorram job right now. Shouldn't the title go with that, at least among folk talking business? "What's the deal?"

"Bear with me," Ames said. "This might be a little long-winded." He addressed Royce. "The men you've met aren't staking my claims. They're staking their own, just like you. But I have a business arrangement with them that makes them more competitive. Tell me, Mister …?"

"Henson. Royce Henson."

"You say you've been prospecting for years. You must like the work. But I'll bet you like some parts of it better than others. How do you like spending weeks looking for a lode that's worth your time?"

"Bout as much as I like spending weeks hunting one down and finding a claim marker on it arready. We have to hump a lot more gear now than we used to, to find a good one, and look harder."

Ames nodded, unperturbed. "And hitting a good one is satisfying, but digging it out of the ground and getting it to market is backbreaking work for a small operation."

"This sounds like a sales pitch."

"It is. But not for what I'm usually selling." He went on, "I bought the license to operate the old network of survey sats from the terraforming project. There aren't many of them left, and they're pretty creaky. They go offline for any reason or none, and when that happens it's a dice roll whether they ever come back. But the ones that work give me a picture of what's under them that you can't get any other way. That's how those prospectors are getting to the good lodes ahead of you. I show them the best places to look, and they grant me a percentage. If they don't like digging for their money, then for another percentage they can just present me with the assay and turn the operation over to one of my crews, and head off to find their next claim while we work it for them."

Royce grunted. "Makes em sound like employees."

"They're getting rich doing what they do best – finding paydirt. Ask any of them if they want to go back to the way they were doing it before." The spunk that had fired the man up for a moment melted off him again. "The reason I told you that was to explain what I might be able to offer you as payment. Say 'yes' to my offer, and you'll get first notice of any clues those sats find for as long as you want them. A year from now, you'll be rich enough you won't have to work ever again, if you don't want to."

"Me and my crew ain't prospectors," Jayne said. Truth, if there was a chance he might lay hands on the man who had taken his little redhead ten years ago, he would go no matter what the deal, but he supposed he had to think about the others.

Ames turned to him. "All I have to offer you is money, Captain. But I know you're here for some serious work on your ship. You find my girl and bring her back safe, your ship'll be fixed up new and packed for a tour of the 'Verse, and you won't even see the bill."

-0-

" _Right, then._ " Badger's voice through the speaker was a little blurry, though not nearly as blurry as his green-tinged image on the bridge's decrepit viewer. " _Think I got all the particulars. Never dealt with this Ames bloke, but I'm sure I can find out if he's got the cash._ "

Jayne reflected that it was damned stupid that a man halfway across the 'Verse was easier to talk to than one who was just a few miles away. The relay beacons would send a wave to any world, but unless someone went out on horseback to track down the captain, he was incommunicado till an hour before sunset tomorrow. "How quick can ya find out?"

Badger blinked at him. It occurred to Jayne that the fixer wasn't wearing his trademark hat, and his hair was messed up. What time was it in Eavesdown? He rubbed his eyes. For that matter, what time was it here?

Badger looked offscreen at something, then looked down at something else. " _How bout now, that soon enough? Yeah, he's got it. Might be the richest bloke on New Home – least, the richest one who's not a Core Worlder_."

Jayne huffed. "Fast work. Thought you said you didn't know him."

The arranger shook his head and mock-sighed. " _There's this thing called the Cortex, mate. Just have to know which buttons to push is all. Anything else?_ "

He hesitated. Jayne sometimes brought deals to Mal, but the captain was always the one who made the decision. But Ames wanted them off at first light. Badger was a master dealmaker. "This all sound straight to you?"

Badger's smile widened. " _So it's_ _advice_ _you want, eh? Well, Ames looks like a straight arrow. His contracts with his prospectors and employees are solid, plain language with no fine print. He's been sued, but what honest businessman doesn't get sued? No criminal charges, no rap sheet. Just a rich bloke who wants his little girl back. Why so skittish?"_

"I just don't want to put us in a tighter spot than we're already in."

" _Fraid the Sarge will clock you with a wrench when you come back?"_

Jayne's ears flexed. Seemed like that business on Ariel wasn't much of a secret any more. Who had told? River? She and Badger seemed uncomfortably thick since the night she'd gone missing at Eavesdown and Badger had brought her home.

" _Uneasy sits the pigu parked upon the throne. If you'd been straight with him at the start, Ames prolly would have taken you on personal. Your agreement with Reynolds isn't exclusive, is it?"_

"Dunno. Never came up."

" _No, then. So long as you don't act against his interests, at least. Instead, you let Ames think you were the captain, which meant when he put the deal to you, you had to accept for everybody, including Reynolds. That's what's got your knickers in a bunch, innit?"_

He nodded. "Ayuh."

" _Heh. Pride has been the undoing of better men than you, Jayne Cobb._ " Badger's smile disappeared; even through the fogged and dusty glass of the viewer, the sudden coldness of the little man's stare was creepifying. " _If it was me there, you couldn't stop me from going. You find that gan ni niang, Cobb, and you deal with him._ " He lightened and sat back. " _Well. The call's collect on my end, and the charges are piling up. That all?_ "

"Ayuh. Guess so."

" _Give me regards to the ladies._ " Badger's face vanished.

-0-

Jayne rose before dawn, feeling out of sorts after a very short sleep. He'd been up most of the night talking – to the Fryes, the Hensons, to his crew and to Badger. But his new employer was impatient to get his kid back – who could blame him? And there had been details to hammer out and preparations to make.

Ames had insisted on a small posse, to the point where he'd ordered his angry son not to join. "He's already shown that he can see a big group coming before they see him, and avoid them," he'd said. "For this job, I need hunters." Jayne tended to agree. Besides, there was no one else from _Serenity_ to send. The Shepherd could have been useful, but he had already shown a reluctance to kill that might prove troublesome. Ames had talked of rescuing his girl, but he'd wisely been non-specific about handling the man who had taken her.

As he was finishing his shave – possibly his last for a while - a soft knock sounded from the door panel at the top of the ladder. "Jayne?" Wash's voice.

"I'm up," he said, blotting his face with a towel. He slung his gear over his shoulder and climbed the ladder.

By the look of the pilot's skin and eyes, Wash was paying for last night's fun, but he was awake and cleaned up and dressed for a day of work. In his hand was one of the ship's com units. "I boosted it a little. Should be able to reach the comsats now, so we can talk just about anywhere. Just watch what you say, because I'm sure the Feds monitor. You know the drill about battery usage."

Jayne nodded. Like Mal and Zoë, he would shut the unit off when it wasn't in use; likely, it would still only last a couple of weeks.

"Don't forget to call at dusk, every day. Zoë won't wait more than one night with no word before she mounts a search."

Jayne raised his eyebrows. "Why? I owe her money or somethin?"

"As if anybody who knows you would loan you a credit." Wash sobered. "Be careful, big man. If you find him-"

"Oh, I find him, I'll be real careful with him."

Wash offered a hand. "How about I see you off here? I think the sound of an engine firing up would make my eyeballs explode right now."

The Shepherd waited at the bottom of the companionway. "Inara gave me this for you," he said, producing a small necklace on a fine chain. "For the girl, rather. Captivity can do strange things to your mind. Offering her a gift might ease her a bit. Tell her it's from her family."

Jayne nodded and pocketed the trinket. He glanced inside the infirmary: no sign of Simon or River. He considered taking the short walk to passenger quarters to say goodbye, but decided against waking them.

Kaylee met him at the mule that would take the party and their gear to the edge of the forest. The girl regarded him silently as he set his packs - one for his weapons, another for everything else – into the baggage recess.

The Hensons arrived, laden with packs, and dumped them into the back as well. Garrod said, "Sure you don't want to start at Founder's Park?"

"If he's smart enough not to get caught, he's prolly watching his back trail. We wanna surprise him, we don't come at him from a direction he expects."

"It adds days to the trip," Royce said quietly. "Ames won't be happy about that."

"Think I am?" It wasn't hard to imagine what might happen to the girl in those few days, not with Kay-Kay standing there pale and wide-eyed with her arms crossed over her belly. "But we might only get one chance at this. We go in smart so we don't get her killed or hid too good to find, dong ma?"

Royce Henson wasn't a man used to taking orders. "You better be as good a tracker as you say you are."

"Shootin and trackin are two things I don't lie about." Jayne wondered if the prospectors would still be willing to follow his orders, however reluctantly, if they had known he wasn't _Serenity's_ captain, just a hired gun and bullyboy with a habit of turning on his crews. Was he the right man for this job?

A small cool hand slipped into his. "Go get her," said River. "You're the man for the job, your tab fits into the slot with a click. She won't be so broke she can't be fixed."

Simon stood beside the vehicle, dressed in borrowed clothes, his ridiculous red bag in one hand and a backpack in the other. "I'm coming along."

Jayne traded glances with the other three men. "You sure you want a part of this, Three Percent? Cause I kinda doubt, we find this fella, we'll be comin back with him."

"And if we find the girl, she'll probably need medical attention." He stowed both bags in the back. "You do what you have to do, and so will I."

Jayne grabbed the medical bag and pulled it back out. "Find somethin else to put this in, that you can carry on your back and can't see through the trees half a mile away."

The Hensons watched him go. Royce said, "This a mistake?"

Jayne took a breath. "He's a city boy, Core bred and raised. If nobody packed his sack for him, it's prolly fulla feioo he's better off without. But he can handle a gun well enough for cover fire, and he ain't weak. I once seen him choke an armed Fed unconscious with his hands cuffed behind his back. Another time, he got shot and dug the bullet out hisself. And if this girl's just three breaths short of dead when we find her, he'll save her."


	4. Chapter 4

The start of the trip was easy going along trails that were clear, well-marked, and smooth as sidewalks; Jayne reckoned that the fringe of the forest was well-traveled. Having looked at the maps Ames had provided last night, though, he figured that would change before they made their first camp.

There was a good reason why a planet full of farmers had left standing a forest covering almost a quarter of the little world's land area. Under the trees, the ground was about as flat as an unmade bed at a whorehouse. Sometime in the recent past - geological 'recent', maybe about the time folks on Earth-that-Was discovered fire - this area had been a bulls-eye for a long string of falling rocks, a bombardment that had heaved and split the crust and made it flow. The topo map showed a hashwork of overlapping impact craters of all different sizes, forming a maze of steep ridges, closed valleys, passes and saddles. It was no wonder the hundan who took all those girls had never been found, Jayne thought. He began to wonder about five men's chances of finding the girl and her abductor in such a wilderness, but roughly pushed the doubts aside. _We'll find a sign. And once I'm on his trail, it won't matter what's between us._

Despite the abundant sign of game about, he had no doubt the area was well-hunted too. Likely the wildlife would become even more plentiful as they went deeper into the woods and the ways became less traveled, but all their hunting would be done within the first week of their journey. They had packed plenty of packaged food; it was Jayne's intent that they hunt for their meals early on, to conserve their field rations, and switch to what they'd brought before they were close enough for a gunshot or a fire to alert their quarry.

Despite the soft trail, the doctor began to lag. Simon had been weight training with Jayne and the Shepherd of late, but that didn't do much to build wind; apparently hiking had never been one of Simon Tam's pastimes. Jayne saw that he was placing his feet carefully and controlling his breathing. But each step took him a little farther behind. By afternoon, despite them slowing their march somewhat, the boy was trailing the group by forty paces.

The Hensons cast glances back at him, and at Jayne. The merc, having spent most of his life among hard-headed men, fell back to a position between the doctor and the prospectors. He understood their impatience, and it was plain what they were thinking. But they weren't keen to abandon their tracker, and Jayne's new position on the march made it clear he wasn't going to leave the boy behind.

Jayne dropped further back, close enough to talk to Simon without being overheard. "Ain't too late to turn back. You wouldn't get lost."

"I'll be fine." Simon's jaw clenched as he swung his foot forward and set it on the trail. "Tomorrow."

"You ain't provin nothin to her. She likes ya the way you are."

"I'm not here for Kaylee, Jayne." The boy turned his ankle on a patch of ground as smooth and flat as a tabletop, and almost stumbled. "I'm doing this for me. And the girl." He winced as he brought the foot down.

A suspicion crossed the big merc's mind as he contemplated the Core-bred medic in his borrowed clothes. "Where the hell did you get those boots?"

"Rosh and I are pretty much the same size. But his foot must be shaped differently, or maybe he just has a different gait. Guess I should have worn thicker socks."

Jayne hurried forward to rejoin the others. To Royce he said, "We're takin a rest. Where's the nearest water?"

The elder Henson pointed left, a small angle off the trail. "Stream that way, maybe ten minutes' walk." He locked eyes with Jayne. "We can't do this every couple hours."

"Won't." He nodded off into the trees. "Lead off. I'll see he gets there."

-0-

The Shepherd met Inara's returning shuttle as soon as it slid back into its berth aboard _Serenity_. As she stepped through the lock, she said, "Did they leave yet?"

"This morning."

She nodded and moved toward the galley. "I wish I could have been here."

"Your appointment calendar is always full when you visit a prosperous world without a Chapter House like New Home. It's part of your mission, after all – to bring the Guild to underserved markets, strengthen demand, and expand its influence."

She smiled. "You almost make it sound like a conspiracy."

"More of a business plan, I'd say. If asked. Did it go well?"

"Very. There's going to be a large social gathering in Capital City two days from now. I've been invited …"

"Of course." Book took two mugs from the cupboard as Inara filled a kettle – from a jug, not the tap – and set it to heat on the cooktop.

"If I'm not booked for our entire stay by then, I'm sure I will be after. So many Core World émigrés starved for culture."

"Not many locals, then?"

"Not many, at least not at this soiree. The wealthy New Homers tend to keep their own company. It's not like Persephone."

He measured finely ground leaves into a thimble-sized tea colander, snapped it shut, and offered its handle to her. "Ladies first."

Inara accepted with another smile, and dropped the utensil into her mug, waiting for the water to heat. She examined her companion carefully. Shepherd Book was out of his clerical garb and dressed in flannel workshirt and cotton pants, but his hands and nails were clean. "It's kind of you to welcome me back," she said, listening to the faint squeaks and bumps and occasional voices elsewhere in the ship. "Am I keeping you from your work?"

"Keeping the others from having to think of things for me to do, more like," he said. "I'm good for running errands, at least. I know the names of the tools and most of the parts, and I don't get lost when I'm sent to another part of the ship." The kettle whistled, and he poured water into their mugs.

"Speaking of errands." She stirred the colander in her mug. "Did you give Jayne my gift?"

"And your message. But I delivered them in the lower lounge, not outside."

Her perfectly trimmed brows drew together. "Why?"

The preacher hesitated. "I think," he said, "if I had gone all the way to the mule with him, I might have gotten in." When the girl made no comment, he went on, "Those men are in a killing mood. If I were with them, I might have needed to step in to prevent a murder." More silence. Book raised his eyes to meet hers. "But I'm not sure I would have."

She sighed softly and removed the colander from her cup. "I know it isn't easy for you, being here." She passed the tool to her companion. "But I think this ship is where you need to be."

"So do I." Book emptied the wet leaves from the device and refilled it. "But, Lord have mercy on me, I didn't feel ready for that test."

"Who did go with him, do you know?"

"Besides the Hensons? Simon."

The sculpted eyebrows lifted. "That's a surprise. Do you have any idea why?"

Book shook his head. "None whatever."

She eyed him keenly. "Well. Perhaps he'll have a calming influence on the others."

The Shepherd watched his tea darken. "I like the boy, but I've yet to see someone he has that effect on."

-0-

Simon lifted one bare foot out of the stream and inspected it: the sides, sole and toes were raw-looking and sporting an assortment of blisters. He applied salve to the swollen extremity. "It'll be cleared up by morning."

Jayne knew that the doc carried some pretty fancy treatments in his medical kit, bona fide Core World miracle drugs. But it was hard to believe any salve would heal overnight the mess the boy had made of his feet, especially since he'd still be wearing the same ill-fitting shoes. If experience was any judge, Simon would have a painful night, and wake tomorrow morning too bad off to walk.

"Why didn't you call a halt?" Gerrod, the oldest son, looked at the doc like he was crazy. "Before you got crippled up?"

Simon shrugged, still working the salve into his foot. "I didn't want to hold us up."

Gerrod didn't comment, just turned away. Dell, the youngest of the Henson clan, scoffed and sat down on a rock, shaking his head. Simon finished up, pulled fresh socks over his feet, and put his right boot back on, pulling hard on the laces to tighten the leather around his foot.

"What now?" Gerrod eyed the mossy bank lined with brush and small trees. "Gather wood?"

Simon shouldered his pack and stood. "I thought the plan was to walk until sundown."

"Simon," Jayne said, "you-"

"We've lost enough time because of me." He winced as he took his first step, but only the first one. He headed back up the hill to the path. "This is the way, isn't it?"

Royce stepped in front of the doctor, forcing him to halt. He regarded the boy for a moment, then passed over his walking stick. "This'll help." He turned, pointing with his chin. "Lead off. Just turn left at the path, you can't get lost." He stood and watched Simon trudge up the hill in a lurching gait, leaning heavily on his new walking stick. Then the prospector pulled a knife from his belt and applied the sawtoothed back edge to the base of a sapling. Once it was free, he unhurriedly began to strip the branches with the blade.

The others gathered their gear and followed. Jayne brought up the rear. As he passed Royce, the man said in a low voice, "You're right. He ain't weak."

-0-

Rosh Frye picked up his bag of tools in the forward hold and headed aft. It felt a little warm inside the ship after being closed up for the night; Rosh supposed the climate control was off setting again. Keeping a constant temperature aboard was pretty low on the 'to do' list, though; making sure the old girl wouldn't blow to pieces on takeoff came first.

The young mechanic ascended the short flight of stairs that ran along the infirmary's forward wall. He glanced through the window down into the ship's first aid station as he passed, wondering briefly why a tramp freighter with a total capacity of maybe twenty people carried such an elaborate setup; the clinic in town wasn't any cleaner or better-equipped than _Serenity's_.

Above the infirmary, Rosh stopped at a low opening in the wall, its cover already off and set aside, and laid his tools on the deck. He peered into the space and listened all around: the only sounds were from his father and brothers on the deck above, wrestling covers off the field generator hardpoints for inspection. God help them all if any of _those_ were cracked, replacements would be impossible to find for a reasonable price, and welding the exotic alloy would be a very iffy venture …

 _Quit stalling._ He got on hands and knees and crawled through, pushing the bag ahead of him, until he reached a space big enough to stand upright.

He was in a short narrow access hallway running between decks from the reactor to the hold. Unlike most of the ship's other human-accessible spaces, its paint was unworn, the colors sharp - because the place had been shut up like a tomb for most of the sixty years since the ship was built, he supposed. The air hummed faintly, its source all around him. A double row of big capped pipes protruded at an angle into the bottom half of the space, the ends nearly touching the floor; at chest height, a line of cabinet-sized electrical boxes was attached to the wall, status lights glowing. Pipes and conduit formed the ceiling. Aft, above the accessway, the passage ended in a blank circular cover, the reactor service cap. There was a lot going on in this little space.

He was here because someone needed to verify the condition of the systems which ran through it. The bridge instruments that should have reported that information were junk or plain missing, having been cannibalized for other uses. That might change, depending on the success of the rescue mission and Ames's notions of 'fixed up new,' but for now they just needed to be sure nothing was about to blow up or catch fire.

Rosh eyed the complex layout. As he had suspected, the inspection job would be very hands-on, and might take a week. Until it was done, he would be spending his days deep in the belly of _Serenity_ , as far from other folks as a man could get and still be aboard ship.

Which was exactly why he had volunteered for the job. Simon's sister was somewhere aboard, working with the others, and meeting her eyes or having to talk to her was something he'd gladly work a week alone to avoid.

He put all thoughts of River Tam's eyes and voice aside and set to work. The telltales on the cabinets all showed the proper number and color of lights, so he could leave opening them up for later. He looked over the keg-sized pipes, which were storage tanks for the liquid helium that cooled the superconducting magnetic drive coil which circled the ship's belt line. The coil was an essential component of the old girl's artificial gravity, and if it wasn't kept damned cold, it would fail, hence the liquid helium.

But Wash and Kaylee had told them that the grav was acting up, which could be a lot of things, but low coolant was a reason for it which could turn catastrophic. They had to be sure the tanks were all at optimal capacity.

A glance down the row showed no obvious problems: no frost on any tanks or fixtures, and the indicators on the tanks all showed close to full, minus the space allowed for temperature expansion. He wasn't ready to trust his little sister's safety to a visual inspection, though. He put a hand on each of them: cool to the touch but not cold, which only meant that the insulation was doing its job or the tank was empty.

He sighed and put on a pair of heavy gloves from his bag. Each tank had an emergency relief valve; he started at one end of the row, opening the valve just enough to hear the tiniest of hisses, then shutting it. He began opening and shutting valves, one after the other. The air cooled, and he wondered how high the aitch-ee concentration was getting. He said aloud, "Rosh Frye is the biggest shagua in the 'Verse." His voice didn't sound funny, so he supposed the air was okay.

The valve on the fourth tank in the portside row wouldn't open.

Rosh drew a heavy breath. Even if this one was full, leaving a basic safety device like a relief valve nonfunctional was bad practice. But to change the valve, he'd have to empty the tank. He eyed the other storage units. He could shunt the helium from this tank into the others, topping them off. It wouldn't be risky, really, not with the ship grounded and the grav shut down. And it would only be for as long as it took to change the valve. He nodded to himself and got to work.

He started at the end of the row, filling each tank from the one adjacent, then refilling the tank he'd just tapped from the one next to it, each tank's level dropping a little lower than the previous one. When he depleted the tank adjacent to the one with the bad safety valve, it was nearly empty. He emptied as much helium from the bad tank as he could, then addressed the partial row of tanks on the other side, duplicating the domino procedure, and made enough room in the tank adjacent on the opposite side to finish the job.

When the gauge finally read empty, he knelt and began applying a socket wrench to the six bolts holding the valve to the bottom of the tank. Four of them came out easily, but two were too gorram close to the wall and floor; he could get a socket on them easy enough, but there was barely room to swing a wrench. The tanks must have been installed fully assembled and everything else built around them, he thought, with little consideration for maintenance. _Typical._ The bolts were long and fine-threaded, and he'd have to turn them a click at a time. If only he had thought to bring a

"Flex extension," said River.

He jerked and banged the back of his head on the underside of a cabinet. The wrench hit the floor and the socket came off, rolling away.

She sat cross-legged on the floor two steps away, between him and the doorway, wearing a pair of Kaylee's threadbare bib overalls over a tight short-sleeved shirt with a neckline that bared her collarbones. Her feet were unshod. The legs of the bibs had been cut almost entirely away, baring the entire length of her thighs as well; out of her usual baggy coveralls and full loose dresses, they looked a whole lot longer, and smooth, and pale as cream.

"Tien shiao duh," he said softly. The girl's outfit seemed damned light for the season, climate control glitch or no. He felt moisture on his upper lip. _Maybe not._ "What are you-"

"It's the reactor." She glanced behind her. "Even on standby, it puts out a little heat." River Tam's Core World accent had a way of slipping disconcertingly in and out of her speech; suddenly she sounded as if she'd been born and raised on New Home. "Hide and seek," she said. "Found you. I win."

Rosh swallowed hard. Kaylee had been fond of hide-and-seek, even after she'd reached an age where most girls give up such games. He had humored her, at first out of pity for his friend Matt's little sister with the tragic past. But as they had gotten a little older, the game had changed: they had been playing 'hide and seek' when he had followed her rustlings and smothered giggles up into the hayloft for the first time. He was suddenly very aware of how isolated this place was. He stood, looking around for the missing socket –

It was in her hand.

Rosh picked up the wrench and stepped toward her. "About the other day. I, uh …"

"Someone made love in here, once," she said absently. Her nostrils flared. "You could still smell the paint. They wore uniforms of a sort, coveralls. Maroon, like spent blood. They spread them on the deck."

Rosh felt the hairs on his forearms stir, but he didn't ask her any of the questions rising to mind.

She looked up at him from under her brows. "You didn't pick her just because she was pretty, and available. You like playing with broken toys."

Rosh opened his mouth, but nothing came out, his voicebox closed off by shock or anger, he wasn't sure which.

"Not like those other boys, the ones who scared her. They would have fed her hurt and fear, made her worse. You wanted to make her better." The girl's legs uncrossed smoothly as she rose. "You don't have Kaylee's intuition, but you like fixing things. It was too late for the sister, anybody could see that. But not her. She was as much a project as a sweetheart to you. You liked making her happy, making her feel good about herself and what she liked." River placed the socket in Rosh's hand, but she didn't let go of it. She looked up into his eyes again. "And you liked breakin her in, too."

He felt his ears catch fire. "I wasn't using her. I _love_ her."

"You do." The Core World accent was back. "Loving someone and using them aren't mutually exclusive. I have direct experience with that. I've been someone's project almost since I could walk. Still am." Her fingertips were warm in his palm, her eyes dark pools a man could fall into and be lost forever. "You feel the same pull towards me that you did with her. You know damaged goods when you see them." She let go of the socket and lifted her hand. "But I don't need any more project managers. And I already have my first picked out. I just have to convince him."

"I wouldn't need any convincing." The instant the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to take them back.

River Tam regarded him with cool eyes, a look very different from any he'd seen on her. There was nothing girlish in it. He was suddenly reminded of the tall black woman who had gone off with Captain Reynolds to mend fences. "Be careful, Rosh Frye. There's a whole handful of men feel protective of this girl. One is rich and powerful. One is clever and ruthless and underhanded." She touched a pendant stone at her throat. "And the others are just plain dangerous."

River stared at an electrical cabinet whose status display showed the same pattern of lights as all the others. She touched an unlit bulb. "This would be on, if it hadn't burned out. Be careful when you open this one up. Wouldn't want something to happen to you. By accident." She turned and sank gracefully to her hands and knees at the crawlway opening, and Rosh swallowed as the scant material stretched across her pigu, rubbing over each cheek in turn as she crawled forward. The cutoff hems rode up, exposing the crease at the base of each -

"The sauce is toxic," she said, her voice turning echoey as she disappeared. "Attempting to sample may result in swollen features, difficulty walking and breathing, or broken limbs."

-0-

The hunting party camped for the night in a thinly wooded saddle. After their brief stop, the ground had risen steadily in a series of ridges, each higher than the last. When the light had begun to dim, Jayne had picked a high pass between two peaks where a fire would be hard to spot. He and Dell had each shot a brace of rabbits on the march, and the coneys were turning on a spit above a small fire laid in a high ring of stones.

" _I suppose this might be called a mutiny,_ " Mal said, his voice tinny through the com speaker. " _Assuming the captain's authority and all. But putting you out the airlock at gunpoint wouldn't be much of a disincentive right now._ "

Jayne puffed up. "If you'd a been there, you would have sent me out here yourself."

" _You're right. And you had every right to hire yourself out_ _while we're drydocked. But you don't want to get in the habit of makin decisions for me, Jayne._ " Unspoken between them – at least while the rest of the crew was listening in – were the particulars and outcome of the last time Jayne had tried to do just that. Jayne supposed the whole crew must know about Ariel by now, but Simon and River's quick forgiveness had kept any of the others from making much of it, and now the events had become somewhat historical.

"I just thought he might take back the offer if he knew he wasn't talkin to you. Wanna ream me out for it, go ahead. Won't happen again."

" _Get your feathers down. It turned out all right, and that counts for more than a little. But if you tell folks ever again you're the ship's captain, you're gonna need a better reason._ "

And that, Jayne knew, was the end of it. To get past the uncomfortableness, he asked, "Aright. Zoë talk to her husband yet?" Simon had traded a few short and guarded sentences with Kaylee and his sister, then handed the com back to Jayne and turned to the solitude of the fire.

" _Just a few words. Still savin the battery, it's close to gone. We'll be back tomorrow, whereupon I expect the estranged couple to do some serious makin up. I just hope they can keep it down enough for folks to get some sleep. How's everyone holdin up?_ " By which he meant their tenderfoot doctor.

Jayne glanced back at the fire, where Simon sat turning their dinner. "Surprisin well. Then again, it's still the first day. Tomorrow should tell us more." He had a plan in mind, should the doc's rosy predictions about his readiness to march in the morning not pan out. But he didn't want to mention it over an open channel until he needed to, or before he was sure it would work. "If that's it, I'll sign off. Big day tomorrow."

At the fire, Jayne spread out the map for his four companions. It was a combination aerial view and topo map, with forest covering most of the page, and elevation lines showing the shape of the land underneath. "We're here. The girl got took here." He swung his finger across the paper, resting it on a spot marked 'Founder's Park.' "He wants to disappear with her quick, he'll take her straight in for a day at least, then pick a spot to den up." His finger sketched a wide circle deep inside the wooded area. "What's in here that don't show on the map? Towns, tradin posts, maybe a sawmill?" If there were folks living among the hills and trees, they might have information he could use.

Royce shook his head. "Nothing like that, not in The Woods. The only settlements are miner's camps, and not many of them. There are plenty of lodes here, but hauling them out is backbreaking work. A prosperous outfit sitting on a big strike will clear a landing field for the ore boat, but the forest takes it back as soon as they play out the strike and leave. You'll find a few tumbledown buildings, but not many people."

"What about caves?"

"Not in that area. No underground water to carve them."

"Hunter's camps?"

"Hunters don't usually come this far in, they don't need to. Unless they're looking for Old Granddad, or maybe Saska." At Jayne's look, the older man smiled. "You know. Every little town on the edge of the Woods has somebody who's been deep inside and seen a deer as big as a horse, with a rack this big -" He spread his arms wide – "And too many points to count. Or else there's this half-man, half-bear that you never get more than a glimpse of. He roams the woods and disappears at will…" His voice trailed off.

"Ayuh. This 'Saska' get spotted a lot, one place in particular?"

Royce shook his head. "It's just a story, an old one. People see Saska all over The Woods. If any of those sightings is really our man, it won't help us."

"Unless some folks have noticed somethin different about Saska lately," Jayne said. Tomorrow, he would have Papa Frye contact Ames and ask him to do a little detective work. He touched a spot on the map just a few miles from their camp. "What's this then?" At the elder Henson's sharp look, he said, "I know what happened there. But what is it?"

He shrugged. "Old mining site at the bottom of a crater. The impact fused the ground and walls – it'll do that, if the soil is right – so nothing much grew there. They cleared what little brush there was to make a landing site, then dug up the middle of the crater, where the lode was. The shack was probly where they lived."

Jayne nodded. "Aright. It's close enough, I think we should check it out."

It got so quiet you could hear the final squeak from the spit before Simon stopped turning it. Royce said, "You really think he might have gone back there?"

"Prolly not. But he might have left a clue behind. It's worth a look." Jayne flicked a glance toward their lame doctor, and Royce gave a look of understanding: the old pit was the only spot within a day's march where a shuttle might put down. "Hey, Doc. Those done yet?"

"I'd need a thermometer to be sure," Simon said, "but I think so."

Dell snorted and dug into his pack, producing a standard metal messkit. "I got one." He opened it and took out a fork, which he stabbed into the haunch of one of the coneys. He tugged, and the meat pulled loose, oozing juice. The smell, after weeks of ship's provisions, produced a rush of moisture in Jayne's mouth. Dell said, "Accordin to my thermo-metric instrument here, it's time to eat."

Everyone went for their kits. Jayne watched Simon, half expecting the Core World aristocrat to come up with a china plate and cutlery. _Powers, just don't let him pull a rutting napkin out of that sack._ But the doctor produced a kit just like everyone else's, acquired from God knew where, and accepted his portion of steaming meat without so much as a wrinkled nose, though Jayne noticed he cut his meat up a good deal smaller than anyone else. Must have been his training as a surgeon, he thought.

After dinner was done, Simon left the circle of light with his kit, presumably to wash it in the stream nearby while the others settled for a good wiping-out and a pass over the fire. About the time Jayne was starting to worry, he came in from the darkness with an armload of wood. Jane noticed it was all deadfall, dry and likely to burn easily with little smoke. The doc fueled and banked the fire carefully while the others spread their bedrolls.

Jayne watched again, wondering what Simon would bring out to sleep on or under, and wondering if the boy would change clothes for bed. _Oh Ye of little faith_ , he thought as Simon spread a thick wool blanket, double-length, on the ground, folded at the foot for a serviceable sleeping bag, just like the four already laid out around the redly glowing fire. "Who packed your gear?"

"Rosh again," Simon said, setting a flashlight and some other tools on the ground next to his sleeping spot. "He seemed very concerned for me out here with all you mountain men."

"He teach you how to use them too?" Dell asked. That boy, Jayne thought, had a bug up his ass about Simon, and Jayne thought he knew why. The youngest Henson was only a few years older than Kaylee, and had been one of her rescuers. Seeing her look at the Core-bred boy with worshipful eyes probably grated on him, and for the same reason it had once grated on Jayne. If Simon was still with them by this time tomorrow, Jayne might have to take young Dell aside for some stern and unwanted advice.

"No," Simon said. "I have some experience sleeping rough."

"Where?" Dell pressed. "Some hiking park where they let you pitch a tent for the night?" He leaned back on his elbows. "With a park ranger telling you where to drive in the stakes, I spose, and skyscrapers poking up over the trees."

"There are places like that on Osiris, but no." Simon stared into the embers. "I spent a couple of months in a blackout zone."

Jayne shot a hard look at the others. None of them seemed to know what a blackout zone was. Only natural, he supposed; canny as they were on their home ground, they were still hicks who'd never seen a big city or had experience with a genuine criminal element. What the guai had Simon been doing in a place like that?

"What's that?" Dell said. "Place with no phone service?"

"Enough," said Royce, watching Jayne.

The big merc said, "Core World cities ain't all skyscrapers and fancy livin. There's places in the biggest of them where the law doesn't reach. The only time cops go in there, they go in like an invading army, and they get back out as quick as they can. There's two-legged predators a whole lot worse than bears in the 'Verse, boy, and that's where they live." He met Dell's eyes. "Tender little prairie dog like you couldn't walk in one side and come out the other."

Dell's nostrils whitened, but he subsided. Simon stared at the fire a little longer, then settled into his bedroll. Jayne watched the others settle in too, then threw a final stick on the fire and turned in. Tomorrow morning, they would head for the place where ten-year-old Kaylee and her sister had been held prisoner by a psychopath.


	5. It's Never What You Think

"Whoa," Mal said softly, "easy there, young lady. As much time as you spent between my legs the past couple days, now you're feelin shy?"

He was presently sharing a stall in the Frye horse barn with the mare he had ridden fence with, giving the animal its first good brushing since he'd set out on the trip. It whickered and switched its tail across him as he continued to coo and murmur, calming and reassuring in the confined space as he drew the big handleless brush over its coat. He breathed deep of the scents of horse and hay and manure, listened to the mare's breathing and movements, felt the hide twitch as the brush passed over and saw the dust rise off of it where the bristles had just been. Grooming a horse was a Zen experience, he thought, one he hadn't realized he'd missed out in the black.

Inara's voice, amused: "Am I interrupting? Perhaps I should give you two some privacy."

He turned and saw her in the aisle between the rows of stalls, smiling at him. She was out of her fancy clothes, dressed in a checked flannel shirt and denim pants, her hair up in a ponytail. Still not looking much like a farm girl, but more wholesome and just plain _cute_ than he could ever have imagined her.

He found his voice. "S'prised the smell hasn't driven you out already."

Inara lifted her nose and took a deep breath. "Believe me, after a client who marinates in aftershave before his appointment, a horse stall is very appealing."

"Well," he said, "be careful. Don't want to ruin those pretty boots."

"I'm always careful where I put my feet."

"And always land on em, I don't doubt." He hadn't meant anything by the remark really, but a tiny line appeared between her brows. He went on, "Ever groom a horse? Or ride one?"

"No and yes. Some of my clients keep stables, but their interest in their animals ends at the barn door. Grooms take care of things."

"Then your client and his horses don't have what I'd call a relationship." He proffered the brush. "Brushing down your mount after a good ride is a reward for you both." Then it was Mal's turn to gather brows. "What?"

The Companion stepped into the stall and took the brush, a tiny dimple at the corner of her mouth. "Jayne said the same thing to me once, almost word for word. But he wasn't talking about horses." She drew the grooming tool down the mare's flank in a long slow stroke that looked like a caress. Mal watched her hands, so smooth and soft and somehow able to make anything they did look sensual…

"I said," Inara said, lifting the brush between them, "is this right?"

"Doesn't matter what I think," Mal said. "What does the horse think?"

As if in answer, the mare muttered and sidestepped toward them, pressing man and woman tightly together against the side of the stall. The woman said, with a hint of laughter in her voice, "I don't think she wanted me to stop." She bumped hips with him as she reached for the animal's neck and ran her fingers through its mane, smiling like sunshine.

Mal's breathing roughened. Her waist was nearly in the circle of his arm, and the warmth and scent of her made the barn smell disappear. She tipped her face up to him, eyes huge and dark, lips like pillows. He swallowed.

A tiny voice whispered darkly, _the last man got a smile like that from her paid for it. What does she want from you?_

She told me she loved me, he thought.

 _One time_ , the dark voice insisted. _In the middle of an argument, and not again since. Mayhap she wishes she hadn't said it the first time._

He dropped his hand and pressed into the corner of the stall. "Did you come out here for somethin in particular?"

Her smile faded. "Yes," she said, giving the horse's shoulder a final lick with the brush. She handed it to him. "Mister Frye wants to talk to you about the ship." She stepped out of the stall and stood aside.

-0-

Jayne returned from his early-morning business to find the others up. Simon sat on his blanket, shoes still off, working on his bare feet. The blisters were gone, but the places they had been were still red and angry-looking. "Thought you said they'd be healed up by morning."

"I said I'd be fine," the doctor replied, working some more salve into the friction-burned skin. "And I am."

"Only took half a day to mess em up too bad to walk on yesterday. What are they gonna be like by noon?"

"I wasn't managing the problem yesterday." The doctor pulled two pair of socks over the heavily coated feet and reached for his borrowed boots. "Today I am."

Royce was watching as well. To Jayne he said, "We still going to the quarry?" The merc knew that the prospector was asking two questions, not one.

"Ayuh. Nothin's changed." It would be nearly noon before they reached the pit; four hours' walk should tell Jayne whether the boy would be fit to continue on.

They broke fast with part of their small stock of perishables from Mama Frye's kitchen, taking their time. Jayne would have liked to set out at first light, but first light among the trees was too dim and uncertain for good footing on the steep and uneven trails. So they waited until a little color came into the world before shouldering their packs and taking up their walking sticks.

The paths continued to roughen. Jayne had seen the last tracks from other feet on the trail the previous night; he reckoned they were out in the wild now. A light rain began to patter on the trees overhead, thickening the air and wetting the ground. Two hours into the march, they were toiling up a narrow path black with old leaves and so steep that, at a separation of three or four paces, Jayne's head was even with the pigu of the man ahead of him. They climbed single file, the Hensons leading eldest to youngest, followed by Jayne. Simon brought up the rear half a dozen paces behind him.

Jayne gave the doctor nearly as much attention as the path ahead. The boy was leaning heavily on his staff, but they all were on this slope. His footing seemed sure, and the merc saw no evidence of pain in his walk. Maybe he'd be all right…

A snap and a grunt ahead of him, and Jayne turned his head back just in time to see Dell tumble past. Simon, with a couple of seconds more warning, snatched at a flailing arm and caught the boy by the wrist. But Dell's momentum took his rescuer off his feet as well, and the two slid down the slope in a bow wave of flying leaves, Dell on his ass feet-first, Simon dragging along behind face-first with Dell's wrist still tight in his fist. The three still on their feet bounded downslope after them, careless of their footing, but still losing ground as the unlucky pair picked up speed.

Simon still had his walking stick in his other hand, and he managed to jam the end into a cleft tree beside the trail as he slid by. It bent, but held long enough to swing him toward the edge of the trail before it snapped. He hooked a sapling in the crook of his elbow and braced, feet wide. Dell swung to the edge of the path and thudded into a tree. He wrapped his free arm around the foot-thick trunk and hugged it like the girl of his dreams.

Jayne reached them first. He stamped a heel of into the soft dirt of the path and grabbed a fistful of Simon's shirt while the Hensons rushed past to reach Dell. "Hell of a tumble there, Three Percent. You all right?"

Simon let go of Dell's wrist and struggled to his feet. The doctor's face and shirt front were black with dirt. He twisted and stretched and tested his limbs. "Well, I may have another reason to have trouble walking tomorrow, but … What are you grinning about?"

Jayne felt his cheeks stretch wider. "Never seen ya this dirty before."

"I've never been this dirty before. Sober, anyway." Simon shrugged out of his pack. He removed his canteen and a square of folded white cloth – so he _had_ brought one – and wet it. As he wiped at his face, he said, "Dell. Are you all right? Do you need looking at?"

Dell's father and brother had been fussing over him, checking him over and peering into his eyes. His pack was gone, there were leaves in his hair, and he was near as grubby-looking as Simon, but he was on his feet and seemed okay. Ignoring the doctor, he brushed at his clothes. "Didn't think I was gonna stop till I was back at the farm."

"The creek, anyway," his father said. "You'd still been busted up plenty by the time you fetched up." He looked meaningfully from his son to Simon and back again.

The youngest Henson shifted his feet. "Got a hell of a grip, Tam."

"Networking at society balls," Simon said, adjusting his pack straps. "All those firm handshakes."

Dell's ears reddened at that, but he went on, "Ayuh. Well, thanks."

"You make it sound as if I had a choice." The doc slipped his arms through his pack and shrugged, settling it. "As if I'd let you be hurt or killed because you _insulted_ me." He turned upslope. "You've just insulted me again."

"Hey, I didn't mean it like that-"

"You didn't mean it at all." Simon turned away. "But I don't care. If you fall again, I'll catch you. And if you're hurt, I'll tend you. If you lost your canteen, I'll share mine. Liking each other has nothing to do with it. You're crew." He started carefully up the slope.

"Well, hell," Jayne muttered. _Reckon Captain Tightpants is rubbing off on him some._ He hustled upslope after the boy and caught up while the Hensons were still staring after him.

"Sorry," said the doctor. "Maybe I shouldn't have come."

"Nah. I been on plenty a new crews. It almost allus starts out like this. People gotta push and bump each other till they settle where everybody fits." Jayne spied Dell's beaten-up pack at the edge of the trail and picked it up, glancing back downslope. Royce and his sons were working their way back up the steep path. Dell's face was sullen, and the corners of his mouth pulled down further as his father leaned close and spoke to him. "Least, with this crew, nobody's gonna be shovin guns up each other's noses." _Probably._

-0-

"Hey," Kaylee said. "You found something to do after all."

Shepherd Book smiled. He was on hands and knees in the dirt of the herb and vegetable garden just outside the Fryes' kitchen door. The section he was working in had been harvested; with a hand rake, he broke up the packed earth, releasing a rich smell, and removed dead plants from the loosened soil and dropped them into a basket. "His Son may have been a carpenter, but God is a gardener. I had a plot like this one at the Abbey."

"I know. How could I forget that bundle of fresh you brought aboard? We ate till we nearly busted. You gonna plant strawberries?" She teased.

"If I did, I don't think we'd be here long enough to pick them." The old man finished his task and rose with the basket in his gloved hands. "At least, I hope not."

"What, you don't like it here?"

The Shepherd paused. "If we're here more than a month, it means trouble. Something on the ship can't be fixed, or we've gotten caught up in a local situation, or River's condition has gotten worse. Something." He gave Kaylee a sympathetic look. "Your family are fine people, and I'm glad to have met them. But we need to be gone, and soon."

Kaylee's eyes dropped to the dirt between them. "I think we already got caught up in a 'local situation.'"

The old preacher set down his basket and took her by the shoulders. "That's not what I meant, child. None of us could turn our backs on that little girl. But staying on the move has always been this crew's greatest security – especially for Simon and River. New Home is a quiet world, but that could work against us. Strangers are bound to draw interest, and the Federal authorities send out fresh wanted posters every ninety days to all their garrisons. If we stay overlong…"

"We'll need to hide them."

The old man reached down for a metal bucket packed with green stems. "Simon's pretty well hidden right now. And River spends most of her time on the ship, which is about as far from outsiders as we can put her. All we can do, really, is make sure that they're not the subject of idle talk from any hired hands when they're off the farm."

"I'll bring it up to Ma and Pa. I'm sure they already talked to them, but I'll have Pa make sure they know how serious we are about it."

Shepherd Book knelt in the cleared dirt with his bucket of plantings, and, through the gloves, idly rubbed at his knuckles as if they were sore before taking up his tools. "You do that."

-0-

The hunting party took a short break at the next stream. While Jayne hunted, and Royce and Garrod stood guard, Simon and Dell washed up a bit. Both young men, bare-chested, knelt at the bank, dipping and wringing their shirts. Their exposed skin sported bruises that would have them moving stiffly tomorrow, the elder Henson judged. "Near a miracle neither one a you broke anything."

"I seem to have both kinds of luck in abundance these days," said the doctor, rubbing at his upper body with the damp wadded cloth of his shirt. He dipped and wrung again, and glanced at Dell just in time to see the boy's eyes flick away.

"Don't take me wrong. I ain't sly," the youngest Henson said as he dunked his shirt in the stream. "I'm surprised, is all. You look more a lumberjack than some soft Core World doctor."

"Well, I don't sit in the infirmary waiting for someone to come in. I have jobs aboard like everyone else. My practice doesn't keep me very busy these days, except when it keeps me _very_ busy. Sometimes the crew comes back after a rough job or a … trade negotiation … pretty banged up. Not Kaylee," he added quickly. "But I think I've put enough stitches in Jayne and the captain to make a shirt." He examined the damp shirt, and began to roll it up. "And at school, I didn't spend all my time in classrooms and making rounds. MedAcad had plenty of sponsored athletic activities."

The young miner wrung his shirt thoroughly and put it back on. "You had time for that?"

"I made time. It wasn't an official requirement, but I was expected to participate."

"Expected? By who?"

Simon brought another shirt out of his bag and shook it out. "Well, by the school. And my classmates, and my family, and by my social class – it's traditional, and part of the networking process. So I ran track and cross-country, and sculled a bit."

"On top of all that schoolin? How long were your classes?"

Simon shrugged. "Ten to fourteen hours a day, including lab work and rounds."

"Gorry. Wha'd you do, make appointments to sleep?"

"Pretty much. 'From those to whom much is given, much is expected.' One of my father's favorite quotes."

Dell eyed Simon's pack. "How many changes you got in there?"

"Just two. My father also told me that seasoned travelers pack half the clothes they think they'll need, and twice the money." He buttoned up his flannel shirt. "Of course, he never traveled anyplace where even banknotes were only good for starting a fire."

"Yeah, I heard Core Worlders keep all their money on computers. You don't use money you can hold in your hand at all?"

"It's illegal," Simon said.

"Yuh bun duh," the boy muttered. "No wonder you shucked it all."

-0-

From the edge of the woods, Jayne stood and looked through his rifle scope down into the crater. "Looks deserted." The little shack's door was closed, but there was a bird's nest in the top of the crumbling outdoor chimney, and the clothesline lay on the ground.

"Ayuh." Royce lowered his binoculars, surveying the area with bare eyes. He pointed left. "Bout twenty degrees around. The path down. See it?"

The big merc nodded, holding back from saying that he had spotted it as soon as he'd glanced down into the crater. The Hensons were strung tight right now, coming back to the place where their kin and Will Frye's namesake had been murdered. He only hoped their doctor wouldn't find a way to set anybody off.

"Still goin down there?" Asked the elder prospector, with an eye flick toward the doctor. After the hillside rescue, it seemed the option of leaving Simon here to wait for a shuttle was off the table. The boy had proved he could pull his weight. And the fiancé of the girl this hundan had stolen ten years before had as big a stake in this venture as any man.

Jayne shrugged. "We're here. It's worth a look." He thought about consulting Ames's aerial maps again, but decided not to waste his time. The old satellites could spot temp changes and vibration; analyze gas concentrations; even look through trees to assay the shape of the land beneath. But when it came to giving up a bird's eye view, they were feioo. Ames had explained that, in the two hundred years since the system had been put in orbit, the satellites' optics had been scarred and fogged from the impacts of a billion dust particles. Whatever the reason, the captures of the little crater were soft and blurry, the shack just a light rectangle in the center.

"Dell," the father said. "Keep a watch up here. Close eye on the top of the trail and the trees around the rim. You see anybody, fire a shot. In the _air_."

The boy hesitated, glanced at his father, and nodded. "Shiia."

They went single file down the path, which angled down along the side of the cliff like a stair. Jayne's ears strained for anything off-seeming, but the only sounds were birdsong and their own footsteps and breathing. Looking down at the shack and its surrounds, Jayne noted that the black glass looked to have been cleared for about ten yards all around the shack, leaving a bare area paved with sand and normal rocks, just as Kaylee and Royce had said. Their descent had shown them only two sides of the windowless little structure, though; first order of business would be a reconnoiter of the perimeter.

They reached bottom, at a spot almost directly facing the shack's door, and picked their way over the black stones. Royce turned an ankle and went down on one knee, hissing in pain; when he rose, Jayne could see that his heavy trousers were cut. He waved Simon away. "Later," he said in a low voice.

The party reached the edge of the cleared area. Jayne gestured for a halt a pace from the dirt, and he crouched, studying it. Unlike the black rubble elsewhere in the crater, the cleared ground would hold prints well, he judged. But there was no sign of recent travel in the area in front of the door. He said, "This is the only way in, right?"

"Ayuh," answered Royce. "Not even a window."

He stood. "Reckon we're alone here then. Don't touch nothin fore I see it."

Jayne walked around the little shack, comparing the real thing to Kaylee's recollection. Royce followed, silent, as they passed the tumbledown outhouse and the bird-infested outdoor oven.

He turned the corner to the back of the shack and froze. Royce nearly walked into him. "Wai-"

Jayne brought up a fist, commanding silence, and pointed.

The row of cairns Kaylee had described was gone, their stones neatly piled together in a waist-high pyramid. No big surprise, that; surely the law would have disinterred the remains of the other kidnapped girls and took them somewhere to be identified and claimed. What brought up the hairs on his neck and arms was the dent in the side of that big rockpile, and the single cairn beside it.

Stepping quiet, both men hastened back to the others and whispered their news. Then with guns drawn, they stacked up at the shack's door. At a nod from Jayne, Gerrod lifted the latch and booted it open, and the big merc rushed in.

Dust lifted up into the air as the door swung wide. The room was vacant, abandoned-looking. There were two doors to other rooms, but a glance at the dust on the floor told Jayne that no foot had trod the inside of the cabin in a very long time.

"Clear?" Royce asked from the doorway. Jayne glanced that way and saw the other men behind him, all waiting just outside, staring into the cabin. What the hell were they doing, hanging out there?

Then he saw clearer. The Hensons were blocking the doorway, preventing Simon from entering. The boy's eyes were wide and staring as he pushed against the human barrier.

"Clear?" Royce said again.

Jayne followed the doctor's eyes, and looked up, almost directly overhead. A short length of rope hung from the little shack's central beam, its end cut off clean. It was stiff with dried blood for the last several inches of its length. The gray wood planks of the roof above it were mottled with spots of reddish brown as well, and several places on the wall up where it met the ceiling. It occurred to him that two of the men at the door had first seen this place when that blood was fresh and warm and filling their noses, the girl it belonged to still hanging from that rope. One of them had cut her free and carried her out. And he had a feeling that the one Kaylee told him had sicked up at the sight was now keeping watch at the crater's rim. "Yeah. Nothin here." He backed out and shut the door.

They returned to the cairn and examined it without touching it. It was a shabby grave, the rocks hardly layered on heavy enough to cover the body beneath. On the side nearest the rockpile, a skeletal hand poked out, and a few long wisps of hair escaped from between the stones near one end, their color leached out by the sun.

Chest tightening, Jayne bent and carefully began removing rocks. The first few uncovered a thick mass of hair, a deep auburn in color, and the shoulder strap of a sundress.

"Wo de ma," said the elder Henson.

Jayne turned his head to look up at Gerrod, the eldest son. The man's face was moving like a sack full of puppies. Jayne said, "You knew her."

"Yeh." His face stilled, sagged. "It's Willamina."

Simon dropped to his knees and spread his hands across the cairn.

-0-

"She done it herself," Jayne said, after examining the pile, and the cairn now covered by a weighted blanket. "Laid down next to it and started coverin herself up, and quit when she couldn't reach no more rocks. Then just waited to die."

"Hell of a way to end." Royce Henson's mouth was a slash in his face. "Guess she thought this was where she was meant to be, after that umhuo was done with her. Sure, she didn't have any kind of a life after she left this place."

Jayne shouldered his pack. "Gonna take one last look around before we leave."

Gerrod and Simon's faces creased. "We can't _leave_ her like this," Gerrod protested. It was his blanket spread over the cairn.

"She's been like this for ten years," the merc said. "Another day won't make a difference. We'll tell em at the nightly call, and a shuttle will be here for her come mornin. I wanna be at least two ridges away by then." He nodded at the blanket. "Better roll that up. You'll need it more than her."

14


	6. Chapter 6

_**A/N: Nothing since May, really? My apologies to all who faved and subscribed, or have simply been waiting for an update to bring this story to the top of the page. I know how hard it is to keep your interest in a story that goes so long between chapters. I plead the usual lame excuse of overcommitment: writing several fics at once, as well as contributing to a collab on Cyborg Central. But this story is much on my mind, and I'll do my best to bring in subsequent chapters in a more timely manner.**_

6.

Willamina's parents had intended her burial to be a small and quiet affair. The family had given her up for dead and mourned her loss years before, and a big public funeral would only pull open old wounds, they thought. And if that gan ni niang who had destroyed her young life had an eye or ear of some sort beyond the border of the Woods – and how else could he have scouted his victims and taken them without being caught or even noticed? Then the manner and means of her finding needed to be kept close.

But space shuttles didn't travel the sky over Millersburg every day. Farmers are early risers; when one of the little doodlebugs belonging to that tramp ship parked at the Fryes' lifted at first light and beelined into the Woods, folks were discussing it over their morning coffee at cafés and kitchen tables, and watching for its return. When it reappeared just an hour later, too soon for a round trip to anywhere but someplace inside the big forest, a goodly portion of the neighborhood began speculating about the Fryes' long-lost daughter. But when James Frye was seen to make sudden visits to his pastor and the family undertaker, speculation narrowed to a single possibility.

Throughout the day, old neighbors made calls at the Frye place, asking the question, and offering sympathy. Jim told them, stiff-faced, that she had been found in the Woods by prospectors, and appeared to have died of natural causes shortly after her disappearance. He thanked them for their concern, and told them there would be no public service. He accepted the customary casseroles and cakes from the neighborhood matrons and made the appropriate remarks. Yes, it would be a relief to see her laid to rest at last. No, there was no sign of foul play, and no evidence of any connection to the Woodsman, as folks had taken to calling the two-legged predator who had taken so many young women and little girls a dozen years before.

"I don't know what we're going to do with all this food," declared Missus Frye as she accepted another covered dish from her husband in the kitchen. "Cold store is full to bursting arready. Can't give it away – even if we weren't expected to return the dishes, word would get back to the folks gave it to us. It would be like slapping away a helping hand."

"Ayuh." He regarded his wife somberly, realizing that talk would make its way from one end of the Woods to the other, regardless of how they handled the situation. "Guess there'll have to be a wake after all."

-0-

Willamina Frye's wake was held the next day, and like the welcome-back party for the Hensons, took place under canvas in the yard between house and shop, adjoining the trees of the Frye woodlot. There were differences: the gathering was held in daylight, scheduled from midday till after suppertime, to unload two meals into the guests before departing. No spirits were served, and no music or dancing offered. Talk and food were the only diversions. And the guest of honor was absent: the girl's remains rested in a cold drawer awaiting an official verdict at the town undertaker's, which doubled as the county morgue and the coroner's office. In the casket's customary place was a side table with a collection of captures, the most recent taken at Mina's fourteenth birthday party. Mal reflected that the young boys gathered around her in the scene were all grown men now, some already raising families, and one of them might have become the pretty little redhead's husband and father to her children, if Fate had been kinder.

He shifted in his seat as he listened to the latest eulogy, this one delivered by Miss Halleck, one of Willamina's teachers. The old biddy stood near the table of captures praising her grades, her perfect behavior in class, and her willingness to help others who were struggling. Mal got the impression that Mina had done more teaching in that classroom than Miss Halleck, who seemed to hold keeping order above stimulating young minds in her estimation.

All the praise and reminiscences about the girl, Mal noted, ended before her kidnapping, as if the broken creature that had haunted the Frye home for a year after Kaylee's return had never existed – even though the proof of it sat at the table nearest the memorial, taking in every word. Will Frye sipped his apple juice and listened, ignoring the occasional glances sent his way, and concentrated on the speakers as they filled in the backstory of the mother he had never known.

Eventually it was time for the family pastor to stand and say some words. Mal shifted again, wishing he was somewhere else. But the Fryes had been kind to him and his people, and he owed them courtesy. The food was good, at least.

But his jaw flexed as he listened to the empty platitudes, delivered by a man who seemed to not even know the girl he was supposed to be talking about. _The Shepherd could have done a better job than this_ , he thought. But Shepherd Book sat across the table, looking every bit as uncomfortable as Mal was.

Only about half the ship's complement was present. Zoë and Wash held down the table with him and Book; Kaylee sat with her family. But Inara, once again, was off on 'ambassadorial' duty, some Core Worlder shindig she'd been invited to days before and couldn't get out of. River was buttoned up tight aboard the ship, Mal judging it too risky to have her among so many strangers without her brother to tend to her, in case she did something alarming. Simon and Jayne, of course, were still out playing Indian. Right now, he wished mightily that he was there with them.

-0-

River Tam sat cross-legged on the somewhat dusty floor of _Serenity's_ secondary bridge, accessible by descending a steep ladderlike stairway between the pilot and copilot consoles. The snug space, originally designed as a docking control station, was mostly stripped of its equipment, but still offered a hundred-and-eighty-degree view through the big forward windows. She stretched out an arm and touched one, feeling the rising heat of the day trying to work its way through the polarized glass. The lower edges of the bottom panels were somewhat fogged from a thousand reentries, but still clear enough to make out the gathering among the trees off to the left. She let her mind drift, taking in the muted sounds of the idle ship, and reaching out to the world around her. Even with her Kaylee filters in place, the thoughts of a few of the people under the tent were sharp enough to hear above the murmur.

 _I stole a kiss from her the day she was taken. She promised me a dance at the end-of-school party…_

 _I wish I had known her._

 _This poor family has been through so much._

 _Why didn't I send Matt with them? Or go myself? I'd heard about the other children gone missing. Did I think our little corner of the world was too quiet and happy for something like that?_

 _Dear Lord, I thought I was past this. Oh, my poor poor babe…_

 _I'd love to put a noose around the neck of the bastard myself, and pull the lever too._

 _I don't belong here…_

 _A little dicktease who flirted with every man in town was bound to come to a bad end. Fucked her crazy, did he? And seeing what a little tramp the younger one turned out to be, I reckon he taught her a thing or two too…_ That one had a greasy feel to it that made her wipe her palms on her thighs.

 _She's all alone in there._ An instant's glimpse of the ship from under the tent, and a feeling of hunger.

 _There should have been a brigade of Federal troops combing the Woods the day these kids were taken. But they weren't some Core World businessman's brats, so their lives weren't important enough._

Another glimpse of the ship in her mind's eye; something about the image told her it came from the same person who had looked this way before. Then, a sense of a decision being made, and rising excitement. _I can do it. I have to. I just can't let anyone see me leave, or know where I've been._

A minute later, she saw a figure emerge from the tent, headed across the field toward her. River saw what was in his hands, and read his intent. He looked up at the bridge, and saw her at the window. She quickly climbed the stairs and left the bridge.

-0-

With his meal tended to and the preacher droning on, Mal's attention – and his eyes – began to wander. He looked over the crowd, which seemed to be paying scant attention to the man. The captain wondered how many of those present had known the girl, how many were here out of courtesy to a neighbor, how many were simply curious. Even Will seemed restless now. Mal's eyes strayed outside the open tent, through the trees to where _Serenity_ was parked in the field near the salvage yard. From this position, her bow and most of her port side were visible; again, he remembered her as she was when he had come upon her in the junkyard on Boros. He felt a sudden impatience to be aboard. That was where he really wanted to be, seeing to repairs and getting her back out into the sky. The Fryes were fine folk, but his people had had plenty of time to sniff the air… He closed his eyes, imagining himself aboard, in space or on a world too remote for the Alliance's interest. Even on a world as bucolic as New Home, he could sense the Alliance's smothering presence covering the planet like a second atmo shield –

Wash, sitting beside him, said, "Mal, uhh…"

The captain opened his eyes and followed his pilot's gaze across the field. His brow creased. "Shuh _muh_?"

There was a dark oval in _Serenity's_ drawn-up ramp: the little-used personnel door, now standing open. "How long?"

"I don't know," the pilot said. "I haven't been looking that way either."

Mal said, low and tense, "Anybody see her around?"

"No," said Zoë, rising. Wash and Book got up as well.

"Quiet, now," Mal said. "Move slow, we don't want to spook anybody. Zoë, check the house. I'll go to the barn, maybe she had an urge to pet another cow. Wash-"

"I'm going to the ship." The Shepherd rounded the table.

Mal nodded. "Good idea. See if she's still in there."

The old man flicked him a flat glance. "And if she's alone."

That was when he remembered that not _all_ the people on New Home were good folks. "Maybe we should do that first." He started out of the tent with Book, but when he was out in the open, he stopped short, looking up at the ship. "Seven hells."

With a faint hum, the portside shuttle was sliding smoothly out of the bay on its cradle, as if preparing for launch.

-0-

The knock at the personnel door was light and hesitant, just a single knuckle against the steel – as if the person on the other side didn't really expect the door to be answered, or was perhaps afraid that it would be. River undogged the hatch and pulled it up and open, struggling with its weight, and stood in the doorway as she let it bang against the drawn-up inner ramp.

Rosh stood looking up at her, a napkin-covered serving plate in his hands. "I know you want to keep to yourself, and I'm sure you've got good reasons. But it just didn't seem right, surrounded by all that good food, knowin you were stuck in here with nothing but that feioo in your lockers." He stretched his hands up through the angled doorway, proffering the tray.

River reached toward it with one hand. But instead of taking the plate, she whisked off the napkin and studied the mound of food that lay under it. "I can't eat this."

"Oh." He started to draw the tray back. "I didn't-"

"It's too much. You'll have to help me." She took the tray and stepped back to let him through. "Qing jin."

They ate, not in the galley, but in the number-two shuttle, looking out the un-occluded half of its window at the Frye homestead; unlike the bridge, with its big flat windows that showed everything inside, they could watch here in semi-darkness without anyone seeing in, though the view was more restricted. The tent's top was visible, surrounded by the treetops of the woodlot, but the gathering beneath it was masked by the drive pod extender beneath them. They shared the plate, each of them with a hand gripping its rim, him using a fork and her with chopsticks. Rosh said, "So. Peace offering accepted?"

"Accepted." She took another morsel and swallowed it. "But that wasn't the first reason you came here."

The plate bobbed. "Look, Miss Tam, you don't-"

"I wasn't the lonely one," she said. "You were." She went on, "You can be surrounded by people and still be all alone. Even if some of them love you. I know." She turned half toward him. "You were too young for girls when she was taken and returned. And she was lost before you started flirting with Kaylee. You never knew her. You don't feel like family, sitting with them right now. You can't share their pain."

"Ayuh," he said quietly. He turned back to the window. "It's a mite better, watching this way. Up above, from a distance. Your troubles seem a little smaller, somehow."

"I love going out on the hull when we're in space," River said. "The stars look close enough to touch, and they fill the sky. My brother never even looks out the window. He feels like the stars are judging him." A dimple creased the corner of her mouth. "Sometimes, I don't think he's all right in the head." She wondered what Simon was doing now. Since she had woken in the cryo box, she had seldom been far from him, and his thoughts were nearly always with her. But he had left her behind to go on an errand of mercy – or, perhaps, a quest of honor for his lady love – and his voice was not one of the ones whispering to her now. Whatever he was doing presently, it must not involve much thinking.

"Stars," Rosh said. "Just little points of light, huh? Like a flashlight beam pointed at you?"

She glanced at the boy, frowning. New Home's atmo shield scattered even the brightest sources of light from space, but the Fryes repaired spaceships… "Have you ever taken a trip in a spaceship?"

"Nuh," he said. "This is as far off the ground as I ever been."

She let go of her side of the plate. "Do you wanna?" She moved to the pilot's chair and sat.

"You know how to fly this?" He said, awestruck and a little afraid.

"Let's find out." River closed her eyes and threw a few mental switches, and the world about her changed subtly. She was aware of the young man beside her in a different way: his _maleness_ moved to the forefront of her perception of him, enticing and challenging her. She found herself looking for a way to compliment him, and stifled the impulse. Rosh Frye wasn't a client, and she had called for this set of filters for a very different reason.

Eyes still closed, she reached out to the control wheel in front of her, running her fingertips over it, searching. Then she rotated the grips a hundred and eighty degrees, turning it upside down and positioning it considerably lower than its normal arrangement. "She began flight instruction as a child," she murmured. "Like everything they taught her that required practice to achieve mastery. She couldn't reach the wheel at first, so she flipped it. After years holding it like that, it didn't feel right any other way, even when she got older and had to hunch a little to use it."

In her mind's eye, she saw hands not her own on the other controls as the little ship glided through the sky. The instruments were familiar now, their readings no longer a mystery. She opened her eyes and looked at the board before her. It was a little different from her borrowed memories, but the layout and uses were very clear. She touched a switch, and the shuttle vibrated. Light flooded the cockpit as the little ship slid sideways out of its bay.

"What are we doing?" Rosh said.

River smiled. "We're going for a ride."

-0-

Mal started forward, only to be checked by Zoë's hand on his forearm. "Wave," she said.

"Somebody's-"

" _Wave._ " She added, "Sir. Just a little one." She tipped a head toward the tent, and lifted her hand in a short wave.

He got her meaning then. The shuttle was gone for now, regardless of who had taken it, and there were reasons not to let on that its departure was unplanned. He raised his hand in a farewell gesture as the little vehicle lifted smoothly off _Serenity's_ port extender, pivoted, and ascended into the hazy sky.

"Inara, by the handling," Wash said. "But why did she come back to trade shuttles?"

Zoë said, "Did you see the starboard shuttle come in? Or hear it?"

"Inara would have waved the ship first, and River would have called. Ah, zhe zhen shi ge kuai le de jin zhan." Mal felt the muscles under his ears jump. He resumed his walk to the ship. "Right now, I'm visiting the notion of draggin that cryo box out of storage."

-0-

"So that's what they look like," Rosh said in a hushed voice. "And Jove…Wo de tien, ah." He laid a hand on the back of the pilot's chair where River sat and leaned far over to bring his face close to the glass, twisting it around. "Where's the sun?"

River touched a control, and the view turned, centering Yellow Sun in the glass. "There."

"That little light there? It seems a lot brighter from the ground."

"You can't see it from the ground, except sometimes at night. It's just a beacon and an anchor. Your heat comes mostly from Jove, and daylight comes from satellites orbiting above us. Even if the star wasn't so far away, New Home has a two-hundred-hour rotational period, tidelocked to the gas giant. It wouldn't be easy to live on."

"You're as smart as you are pretty," he said. "But knowing too much about a thing can spoil it." He leaned lower, his cheek just touching her hair and his lips an inch from her ear. "Ain't the stars s'posed to be romantic?"

River's breath caught. For an eyeblink of time, she was in a warm board-walled room filled with sweet-smelling hay, dust motes solidifying the shaft of light coming in the open window high on the wall, a teenage boy with Rosh's face, smiling as he lowered himself onto her. A pair of voices murmured warnings in her mind: _not yet, let it build,_ said one; _not here, not him,_ said the other. One was Inara's, but River was unsure whether the other was Kaylee's or her own.

She reached for the controls again. Rosh groped instinctively for a handhold as the ship nosed down to point at the little world's surface. She smiled and placed two fingertips on her lips. "We're not falling."

"Right, I knew that," he said, staring down at the surface twenty miles below and holding tight to the grab bar.

"See the terminator? The shadow line. It's not perpendicular to the plane of the sun."

The boy relaxed his grip, and stared raptly once more. "Gorry. It's sure not like a map. Not even weather vids. It's like the stars, you feel like you could reach through the glass and touch it."

The shuttle's orbit was low, and counter to the little world's artificial day/night cycle; they approached the terminator swiftly and crossed it, and the ship was plunged into darkness. River noted the scarcity and dimness of lights on the surface below, comparing it to Osiris, whose nightside was jeweled with city lights lining the river valleys and clustering around the softly glowing lakes.

A babble of voices rose up at her, and she shortened her reach until only Rosh's thoughts impinged on her mind. Her breathing roughened at those thoughts, and she tightened her control further until they faded.

"River?" He said. "Is something…"

They crossed the terminator; daylight off the ship's surfaces made them blink, and the world below them flared with color. At this height, the works of Man were invisible by daylight roads and buildings, at least; farm country was a different shade of green, its texture even and uniform. They passed over their takeoff point, and she resolutely closed her mind to whatever mental or emotional storm was swirling below. Jayne's voice came to her – in memory, not mindwave – saying, _You wanna do somethin, better to ask forgiveness later than permission before._

A vast expanse of woodland approached from over the horizon, and she knew they were about to overfly the Wood.

Jayne and Simon were down there somewhere under the canopy, and her knowledge of orbital mechanics told her the shuttle would pass over not far from their previous night's position. She wondered how they were feeling, and what they were thinking. If they were in danger, she thought she would sense it no matter how far away they were or how tightly she was filtering, but…

The sunset call relating Mina's discovery two days ago had brought Kaylee's family to tears and tight embraces, but River sensed deep anguish on the other side of the com connection as well: anger, frustration, and fear for the missing child. Last night's call, after the tormented girl's body had been recovered and a wake announced for the next day, had been muted and filled with things unsaid – at least, to those without the ears to hear the rest of the conversations. She was still trying to process it all, but it seemed to her that the hunting party was on the verge of an explosion of some sort.

The mottled green of the Wood now filled the view. It suddenly occurred to River that she might be closer to Jayne and Simon at this moment than she had been since their departure. She cautiously loosened her control, listening.

Voices coming from below were few and faint and mostly scattered. They came from people engaged in routine tasks, hunting and gathering, digging and building things that she was sure were temporary. Visitors come for a purpose, not settlers come to make a home.

She flushed as a feeling of warmth suffused her, followed immediately by an image: herself, dancing, not at a recital back home but in the hold of _Serenity_. She was subtly changed, more graceful and beautiful than reality, shining with an inner light. The vision faded as quickly as it had appeared, and River smiled. _Jayne, or Simon. One of them is thinking of me._

"River? Are you okay?"

"Yes," she said. "I'm wonderful. Sometimes I forget."

The view before the windows was still the dark mottled green of the Wood. How would the hunting party find a single man and child in all that wilderness? There wasn't a forest half so large on all of Osiris, she thought, despite its reputation as a nature conservancy. She doubted any of the Central Worlds had a plot of unmanaged land this size. There were a great many parks, but few places that had simply been left to nature-

River's hands jerked on the inert control yoke as she was bombarded with a series of disturbing sensations: a feeling of hunger, deliberately left unfulfilled, savoring the withholding of final satisfaction, like a predator in the habit of playing with its food, a cat batting a squeaking mouse between its paws. River had felt something similar twice before: once at a campfire alone with Zoë, when four men had accosted them intending a night of rape, robbery, and murder; and once before that, when _Serenity_ had been boarded by a bounty hunter named Jubal Early. The feeling passed, leaving her feeling cold and dirty.

Immediately after, she was pierced by a hot needle of fear. An image rose in her mind: a big man, looking down on her as he walked behind, a huge knife in his hand. The image disappeared, leaving her shocked and short of breath.

"River!" Rosh's hands were on her shoulders, steadying her as she slumped in the pilot's seat. "River, what's wrong?"

"Much," she said. "But one thing is right." She busied herself at the controls, preparing for a landing.

-0-

Wash's voice came over the intercom, echoing off the hard steel walls of the hold. " _Shuttle's coming in, docking portside._ "

Mal touched the send button. "She call?"

" _Just the automated stuff, no voice. Maybe it's not her._ "

"It's her." He disconnected and made his way up the stair to the catwalk leading to the portside shuttle dock. He'd been trading waves with Port Control for better than half an hour, trying to talk them out of grounding the shuttle and fining him into poverty for all the traffic rules the crazy girl had bent or broken. Mind, nothing she had done had been hazardous to herself or anyone else - it had all been feioo like calling for permissions and filing flight plans, but bureaucrats took such things to heart.

At the hatch, he squared his shoulders and steeled himself. The last time he had met River at the shuttle dock had been an unexpected and mighty unsettling experience. She had been channeling Inara then, too, and her greeting had made him leery of getting within arm's length of her for weeks afterward. Things were going to have to go different this time. He had decisions to make, and she had better be prepared to answer for her behavior without … engaging in distractions.

He heard the whine of the shuttle's engines, growing louder, then winding down as it settled onto its perch on the extender, touching down with a soft bump that he felt faintly through his boot soles. Then the hum of the cradle drawing the boat into the ship. The light above the hatch indicated docking and, a moment later, the equalizing of pressure. He could hear the shuttle's hatch creak as it was pulled open, and saw the handle of _Serenity's_ turn. He drew a breath as the door swung open.

Rosh Frye stood in the hatchway, looking a little frazzled, and possibly grateful to be back on terra firma – at least, until he spied Mal waiting. The boy's mouth dropped open, and he swallowed. "Sir, I – nothing happened, I mean, I didn't know, we just…" He lapsed into silence, awaiting judgment.

Mal said, "She alone in there?"

Rosh gave a jerky nod.

Mal gave a sideways toss of the head. "Gun ku ku."

The boy sidled past. "Sir, I never laid a hand on her."

"All that protestin just tells me how hard you were thinkin about it," Mal said. "Go on, I said." As Rosh's feet clumped down the stairs, Mal went through the hatch in search of trouble.

He found River still in the pilot's seat, staring out the window at the treetops and the tent sheltering the wake, which was wrapping up. "River," he said, his ill mood replaced by unease at her quiet manner.

She turned to look at him. "I found him." She shivered.

Mal scowled. "Who?"

"The man with the girl." She looked back out the window. "And when I go up again, I can lead them to him."

16


	7. Chapter 7

7.

"Damn thing," Jayne said, smacking the com against the heel of his other hand. "Must be Core World feioo. That stuff allus lets you down when you really need it."

Garrod Henson stared off into the fog around them, which was already thick enough to make the trees ten yards away indistinct, and getting heavier. They had stopped early because of it, building a fire against the sudden dark and chill. It threw back the light of the campfire, making the campsite brighter than it would otherwise be, but shortening their visibility even further and stealing their night vision, making them feel closed in and claustrophobic. There could be a hundred eyes watching them out there, just ten paces away in the darkness, and they'd never know it. "We're in a deep saddle. Maybe there's just no line to a sat. We could move a few more miles-"

"And walk blind off a cliff, likely," his father said. "It's not just foggy now, it's dark. I think we can let one night pass without a call."

Jayne supposed he was right, but he didn't like it much. He didn't really believe the rest of the crew would come looking for him over one missed wave, but he had been hoping for some news from Ames that might narrow their search. Jayne had been wearing out his eyes on those gorram maps at every stop, looking at water sources, cover, easy access, nearby habitations occupied and abandoned, and a host of other factors. He thought he had eliminated a good chunk of territory from their search area, but what was left would still take them weeks to go over, and if the hundan stayed on the move – Jayne didn't expect that, but it was possible – they might cover every square foot of it and still miss him.

Simon came in from the fog with a double armful of deadfall – starting and tending the fire had somehow become the doc's camp job, just like filling their canteens and cooking had become Dell's – and dropped it a short distance from the fire. "Damp out there," he said. "And the temperature is dropping."

Jayne eyed the cheery blaze, whose glow might be visible for miles on a clear night. The smell of a fire could travel even farther, under the right conditions. It was safe enough tonight, he judged, but soon they would be drawing close to the area where the gaiwu had likely denned up with the girl. And that meant that this would have to be their last fire.

The party woke the next morning still surrounded by a gray curtain. They ate a cold breakfast while things lightened up, and then set out, the trees disappearing into white blankness thirty feet all around. They walked downhill for most of the morning; the fog stayed with them even when the morning sun would normally have burned it away. The white blanket seemed to follow the travellers, rolling downslope from the saddle above, and the faint warmth of the sun only seemed to bring up more mist from the damp earth.

The woods they were traveling through abruptly changed. The trees became much smaller and crowded together, in many places clustered too close to walk between. The damp ground between was thick with brush. The trail narrowed and started to meander; they walked single file, Jayne leading. Behind him, Royce said, "This is second-growth forest. Must have been clearcut ten, maybe fifteen years ago."

"Thought you said loggers don't come in this deep."

"They don't. Cutting and grading a road for hauling the wood out makes it more trouble than it's worth, even if you got a sawmill on site. And you couldn't lift enough of it out by air, not without a skiff the size of an ore barge. Those don't come cheap."

"So what happened to the trees?"

The elder Henson shrugged.

"Why don't they just put a road through all this and be done?" The merc grumbled.

"New Home is self-sufficient, but that doesn't mean it's prosperous. You've seen the terrain. A road would be a real engineering project. It'd have to pay for itself somehow, and it wouldn't. Core Worlders and rich folks travel by shuttle and aircar."

"So, the folks who can afford to build a road don't need it, and them as could use it can't afford it."

"Ayuh. That's the Rim pretty much all over."

In the middle of the group, Simon's eyes slid over the hazy scenery, his mind on other things. He wondered how River was doing. He had had serious misgivings about leaving her in the care of Kaylee and Shepherd Book, but he couldn't turn his back on that kidnapped girl. And bringing River with him to sleep rough in the woods surrounded by angry violent men was out of the question. He hoped the others were keeping her busy.

If they camped early enough, he thought, he would begin composing a letter to his parents. Waving them or sending a message by post was unthinkable, but after Gabriel Tam had found his children aboard _Serenity_ \- and had helped them get rid of Niska once and for all – he had made arrangements through his Resistance contacts to deliver messages. The delivery schedule was decidedly uncertain, but whether it took a week or six to travel between the ship and Osiris, each letter was a precious thread in the lifeline connecting the separated family.

Dell marched close behind Simon. "How's the feet?"

"Fine." Simon said. "I think I'm breaking Rosh's shoes in all over again. When he gets them back, his feet may be sore for a while."

Garrod tossed a glance behind him at their back trail and huffed softly. "You steppin into his shoes. He's gonna have to get used to that." At Dell and Simon's quizzical looks he went on, "Guess I'm talkin out of turn here. Thought you knew." He paused. "I'm pretty sure Rosh and Kaylee were sweet on each other before he got adopted."

Simon blinked. "Rosh is adopted?"

"Yuh," said Dell. "Year or two after … we brought her back. His parents got kilt in a fire, and the Fryes took him in." He scowled at his brother. "You don't think they…"

"None of my business. But no matter what they did before, I'm fair certain they're past it." Garrod nodded at Simon's pack. "He took good care of the man she brought home. 'Less you're the jealous type, you're not gonna have any trouble with him."

Dell grunted.

Fifty meters farther on, Garrod came up behind his brother and touched his shoulder. The two fell back until Simon's back was almost lost in the mist. "What is it?"

"Well," said Dell, "I didn't want to talk out of turn either. But I been watchin his sister, and I think maybe Rosh Frye has another reason to be nice to her brother."

Ahead, Simon put his foot down with exaggerated care, thinking furiously. He quickly decided not to let on that he had overheard. Figuring what else to do, however, was trickier. His sister was a beautiful young heiress not entirely in control of her faculties, and seemed to be developing an affinity for men of questionable character. He shook his head. Badger had turned to be a better man than Simon had ever imagined, worthy even of Malcolm Reynolds's respect, and a valuable patron. And Jayne had become, for the present at least, Simon's closest friend, and seemed in no hurry to capitalize on his sister's schoolgirl crush for the big merc. _Maybe she's better at picking them than I am._

Half an hour later, the path opened into a clearing carpeted with long grass that lay on the ground, all in one direction as if blown flat by the wind. Visibility still ended at around twenty yards, Jayne guessed, but it was harder to tell without any trees to judge the distance. Something about the sound of their footfalls told him that the open space extended far past their limited sight. He asked Royce, "Why ain't there no trees here?"

"Not enough soil, prolly. There's other meadows in the Wood like this, here and there. Can't dig a posthole in one of em without striking solid rock."

They kept going through the trackless field, Jayne using the grass for a compass. They placed their feet carefully on the dewy carpet, unsure what lay beneath. No one spoke. The soft springy footing muffled their footsteps, and the fog seemed to be keeping the birds quiet in their roosts. There was a heaviness about their environment that discouraged sudden movement and unnecessary noise.

Simon turned to check on the Henson brothers, and saw them draw up and stop. He turned back and nearly ran into Royce. The older man crouched; Jayne was already on one knee, pistol in hand, his palm facing downward in a 'get down' signal. The doctor went to one hand and knee, and looked past the merc: faint against the blank white backdrop, he saw the ghostly silhouette of a small building.

Garrod and Dell secured their walking sticks to their packs and took their rifles in hand. Simon glanced at them. "Expecting trouble?"

"It's the trouble you don't expect that gets you." Garrod's jaw set. "This just looks too much like the shack in that rutting crater."

Simon fumbled open a flap in the back of his pack and dug out the pistol Jayne had loaned him for target practice. He still wasn't very good with it, but visibility was only ten yards anyway; at ten yards all you needed to hit a man-sized target was a steady hand, and Simon had very steady hands.

 _Wait_ , Jayne signaled, and crouch-walked toward the shack. Halfway there, he stopped. His head swung slowly from side to side. Then he duckwalked back. "There's a whole row of em. Looks quiet. Either nobody's home or they ain't up yet."

"It's noon," Royce pointed out.

"Ayuh. Spread out a little. We'll go in careful just the same."

The group spread to a line abreast and moved up. The single shack became a row of dilapidated small buildings sided with rough planks. Weeds grew at their bases. Wisps of fog drifted through the gaps between the buildings. The place had a long-abandoned feel to it, but Jayne still stepped quiet, watching carefully.

Royce grunted.

"What is it?"

"Let's see the other side. Then I'll be sure."

The men filtered through the gaps between the buildings to the other side of the row, and Jayne stopped. "What the hell is this?"

They stood in another clearing, smaller and barer. At its center was a row of rusted metal vats, six or eight feet in diameter and four high, each with a flattish cone-shaped lid. To Jayne, they looked like soup kettles for an army. Closer examination showed them to be bottomless, raised a few inches off the ground by an arrangement of square steel tubes. The ground around each was bare and scorched black, with piles of dirt all around.

Royce Henson said, "It's a charcoal factory."

"Charcoal?" Jayne looked at the row of containers. "They cut all them trees down, and then _burned_ em?"

"Not all. You don't make charcoal by burning the wood, you cook it. You pack one of these kilns tight with seasoned firewood, then you light the stuff at the outer edge, just inside the wall." He tapped one of the tubes underneath with the side of his boot. "These feed the fire air and channel the smoke. The wood in the center gets really hot, hot enough to turn black. But it doesn't burn – no air. And all the water and impurities get cooked away." He glanced past the shacks toward the meadow. "Charcoal's a lot lighter than wood. Easier to package and ship, too. Wouldn't take much of a truck, if you kept it running all the time. That clearing we walked through was prolly their landing field."

Jayne scanned the puny treeline, imagining the woods cleared all around as far as the eye could see. "Who the hell would they sell that much charcoal to?"

"Restaurants." Simon's gaze swept the row of buildings. From this side, they were obviously abandoned: boards missing from the walls and roofs, doors fallen off their hinges, weeds climbing the walls. "Cooking with charcoal is common among the better eateries in the Core. It's supposed to impart superior flavor to the food. But Core worlds won't burn their woodlots to make it. Funny. I never really wondered where it came from."

Garrod scoffed. "Usin spaceships to haul charcoal halfway across the 'Verse. Yuh bun duh."

"I've seen stranger things," Jayne replied, thinking of cows and wobble-headed dolls. And niu fun. Harrow's little herd had been eating and crapping in _Serenity's_ hold for weeks; just throwing away all that bovine end product had been unthinkable to that half of the crew who had been former farmers, ranchers and gardeners on nutrient-poor Rim worlds. They'd shoveled it up and freeze-dried it in the vacuum of space, and sold the fertilizer at their next stop for a price that had near doubled their profit on the trip. "Think they moved on, or just went outta business? Leavin their equipment behind and all."

Royce kicked the bottom of the kiln; the rusted metal crumbled, leaving a small hole. "These wear out after a while. Must have taken years to clear out a parcel of land this size. I'd guess they just left them behind and moved on with new ones." He said to Simon, "Core Worlders are still buying the stuff, right?"

The doctor nodded. "It's not a fad. It's a tradition, brought from Earth-that-Was. But wouldn't the War have interrupted trade about that time?"

"Not for long. The Alliance landed troops here as soon as the local Independents raised their flag over the courthouse."

Dell slung his rifle. "Why so much interest? Thinkin he used this camp as a hideout?"

"Maybe." Jayne's tone made clear that that wasn't what he'd been thinking about, though. "Musta been a busy place. Trucks comin in and goin out, men hirin on and quitting. Lotta strangers in one place." He turned to Royce. "Ten, fifteen years, you said?"

The elder Henson's eyes met his. "Too far away. She said he came back every night."

" _Almost_ every night."

Dell frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"The man who took Kaylee and the other girls," Simon said. "No one ever saw him, but the way he did it took planning, and knowledge - if not knowledge of his chosen victims' movements, at least a knowledge of the area, good hunting spots where he might find a victim and catch her alone and kidnap her without being seen. He must have had a source of outside news without leaving the Wood."

"He might have traded with these people," Royce said. "Hell, he might've worked here, between kidnappings. I wonder if any of the girls gone missing had kin here."

Garrod opened the bolt of his rifle, inspected the round, closed it. "Imagine it. Workin shoulder to shoulder with that um huo. Sharing meals, trading jokes. Talking about the family back home. Showin him a capture of your sweetheart. And your sister." He opened the rifle again. "You'd have to feel _something_ when he took it from your hand. You'd see it in his eyes as he looked em over. He couldn't hide that."

"Whatever else he is, he's a hunter," said Jayne. "He knows how to hide and blend in and lie in wait. And a man like that prolly doesn't really think of other folks as human. That makes it easier." He moved off, slowly. "If he used this place then, he might be still shadowin em, dennin up within walkiin distance of where they're camped now. Mebbe they left a clue here where they went. Or maybe we can get that out of Ames."

"Sounds like a long shot," said Dell.

"So's checking out Saska sightings," replied his father, as he watched Jayne move among the buildings with his eyes on the ground. "We might have to turn over a lotta rocks to find something that points to this gan ni niang. Can't expect somebody to just give us directions."

-0-

Mal reached above him and slipped the corded mike back into its overhead receiver. "No need to worry just yet," he said to the others assembled on the bridge. "Just cause we didn't get through doesn't mean something bad happened. I can think of a hand of harmless reasons they didn't answer."

 _And many more bad ones_ , River thought. She didn't have to be a reader to discern the unease underlying the captain's reassurances. "I could go back up in the shuttle to look," she said.

"And then what? Drop them a note tied to a wrench? You've been over that forest. What are the chances they're within miles of a place you can land a shuttle? Besides," Mal added, "after the apoplexy you gave those traffic-control types, you better not put hands on a control yoke until it's time to play huntin dog for Jayne and company."

A hand slipped into River's. "Fang shin," she said to Kaylee. "One bad man isn't enough to take them down."

The hand in hers twitched. "Sure," said Kaylee, and River knew she was thinking of Jubal Early.

"If we don't reach them tomorrow night, we'll go lookin at first light," Mal said. He looked around at the assembled crew, looking for questions or dissent. "All right then." The light outside the windows dimmed and went out, and the bridge lights flicked on automatically, darkening the view outside still further. "We all got busy days tomorrow. Best rest up."

River stayed behind, waiting in the copilot's chair for the others to file out the door and down the short stairway to crew country. She listened to them disperse: Wash and Zoë to their quarters; Kaylee and the Shepherd to the galley; Mal and Inara, speaking softly together, down the companionway to the lower level that contained the passenger dorms, the infirmary, and the lower lounge, which she knew was their intended destination. But sampling the flavor of their emotions, River judged a seventy percent chance they would be arguing by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, and would part ways soon thereafter.

Before long, the only sounds in the grounded ship were the faint _tink_ ing of Kaylee's tools and an occasional small breathy gasp from the pilot and first mate's room. River rose and ghosted through the hatchway and down the short stair, where she stopped, listening.

Grounded and powered down and half deserted, the shipboard environment made her a bit restless. She much preferred the ship when it was alive with power and life. But convalescents were often quiet, she reminded herself. Soon enough, the engine would turn, humming and squeaking. The drives would roar, and the passages and compartments would be busy again. For now, though, _Serenity_ reminded her of the cryo box: asleep, silent, waiting.

River found herself standing at the closed door to Jayne's room. It was locked, of course, but half a minute's work inside the service panel beside it took care of that little impediment. She toed the bottom of the door – carefully, so as not to disturb the busy couple next door - and it swung back, forming the top of the ladder. She hesitated a moment, reflecting on rights and proprieties, then stepped on the topmost rung and went down.

Once her feet touched the deck, River lifted her head and flared her nostrils, taking in the man-scent that filled the little space. She was now much closer to Zoë and Wash, and the heat of their lovemaking seemed to radiate through the wall. River's eyes were drawn to Jayne's bunk, and her mouth moistened, thinking of the night she had spent with him there. She took a breath and resolutely put the image aside, clamping down on her extrasensory perception, and looked around.

The small room wasn't nearly as tidy as her brother's, but it wasn't the sty that most of the other crew imagined it to be. The floor could use a thorough mopping, as well as the bottom meter of the walls. The sheets needed changing, and the thin blanket might not have been to the laundry since it was new. And something warned River not to tip out the commode for inspection. But there was no garbage on any of the horizontal surfaces, and his belongings were stowed neatly. The guns he hadn't taken with him were neatly hung on the pegboard over his bunk, and were clean and well-cared-for.

The small set of built-in drawers yielded few surprises – she noted with a grimace that he owned another tee shirt with the hated Blue Sun logo that he hadn't worn in her presence; she wondered if that was the product of coincidence or caution. Mama Cobb's gift, his beloved orange toque, was laid flat in a back corner of the top drawer. His stash of nonperishable snacks was gone, probably packed for his journey; perhaps she could replenish it while he was gone…

What was she doing here?

The short and simple answer, of course, was that she missed him, and was trying to feel closer to him by surrounding herself with his things. But it felt like she was here for a more concrete reason as well.

The montage of pictures stuck to the walls exhibited a few shameless females, but most were of normally clothed people of both genders, and might be family photos. She touched them, but with their owner so far away, she received no thoughts or memories, only a sense of possession.

Jayne's guitar hung in its usual place on the wall. River ran a finger over the strings: still unturned. Not surprising; he only kept it in remembrance of his older brother, who had died without keeping his promise to teach Jayne to play. She carefully removed the instrument and sat on the cot with it.

River had some familiarity with stringed instruments, but guitars were uncommon on Osiris – at least the parts of it she had known. _Five strings_ , she thought. _More than a sanxian, fewer than a zither._ She examined the neck. _Fretted for a Western musical scale._ She slid her hand along its length, and seemed to feel other fingers on the strings; whether that sensation was from her eldritch sense or just her imagination, she didn't know. She plucked, turned the key, plucked again. She selected another string. Then she went back to the first and made an adjustment. She repeated the process with all five strings, then experimented with a few chords, frowned at the result, and started over. Eventually she had an arrangement that satisfied her, and she began picking out notes, playing a simple tune, then more complex ones as her fingers and imagination adapted to the guitar's style of play. When she exhausted her repertoire from related instruments, she began experimenting.

"Wai." Kaylee's voice, distant and echoing. "River. You still inside your head, or are you gone somewhere?"

River realized the mechanic's voice was coming from the top of the ladder. She stopped playing. "I'm here," she said. "I was concentrating."

"Ayuh." The sound of shoes on the rungs, then Kaylee's feet appeared, coming down the ladder. She reached the bottom, and with one hand still on the ladder said, "You comin to breakfast?"

River noted that the redheaded mechanic didn't look around at the room's furnishings and decorations; Kaylee, it seemed, had been in this room before, and often. Then her words registered. "What time is it?"

"Breakfast time," Kaylee said, "which is why I'm servin breakfast."

She stared down at the instrument. "I've been playing all night, then."

"Accordin to Wash and Zoë. They were markin every note." Kaylee smiled. "Je bing bu chong yao. I don't think they were planning ta sleep much last night anyway." She gazed at the instrument in River's lap. "You're really good on that. It almost sounded like there were two of you down here, playin a duet, like. How long have you been playing guitar?"

"What time is it?"

Puzzled at the change of subject, Kaylee said, "Mm, about seven?"

"Eleven hours then. Not excluding the time I spent learning to tune it."

Kaylee shook her head, smiling. "Tian cai, for sure."

River carefully hung the instrument back on the wall. "He always wanted to learn. When he gets back, I'm going to teach him."

 _ **A/N: I don't know how anybody else fills that particular space in the narrative, but the tune I imagine Kaylee hearing River play is 'Ebon Coast,' as performed by Andy McKee.**_

15


	8. Chapter 8

The closed aircar with the Alliance emblems touched down in the Fryes' field around noon. When its doors opened, a man in Army grays adjusted his holster and stepped out, followed by two men in the sort of dark nondescript suits worn by midlevel officials. They looked around, gazes lingering on _Serenity_ , then proceeded toward the grounded ship.

River watched from a tiny gap between the closed doors of the maintenance shed, Matt Frye beside her. Only chance and the need for a salvaged part had placed her here at this moment instead of in the ship or the open field. She had almost stepped out of the shed, part in hand, only to find her way stopped by Kaylee's older brother. He had raised his hand, urging her silently back, then quickly drawn the doors shut as she heard the whine of the approaching vehicle's engine.

Matt looked through the gap over River's head. "Things are interesting around you, that's for sure."

"'May you live an interesting life?'" she said, quoting the Chinese curse.

"Didn't say I envied you. Little sister can have all the family's thrilling adventures."

The uniformed man pounded on the personnel hatch while the other two waited. The ramp swung down, forcing the three visitors to scramble aside. Captain Reynolds stood at the top. He exchanged words with the suited men at the bottom of the ramp. Their words were too far away to hear, but River caught the officials' impatience, and the slippery feel of Mal's evasions. Finally they boarded and were lost to sight. The sense of them diminished as well, but she had acquired an inkling of their purpose here already.

"They lookin for you?"

"They want the shuttle pilot from the other day," she replied. "They don't know it was me."

They watched for long minutes, but nothing further was visible. "We better stay put till they're gone," Matt said.

"Shiaa."

River studied Kaylee's older brother. He was half a head taller than his sister, and darker, rather more like his father than his mother. His eyes were dark as well. And even though they stood side by side, he seemed to be in deeper shadow. _No. It's his mood that's dark._ She watched his eyes as he peered intently through the door gap. Carefully, she loosened her filters and let his thoughts and emotions drift into her. She said, "You hate them."

He started to protest, then said instead, "That obvious?"

"No," she said. "But sometimes I can tell things about people." It had been Matt's inner voice at the wake, she now realized, that had bitterly opined that the Frye girls had not been important enough for the Alliance authorities to mount a rescue.

They were silent for some time. Finally Matt said, "My brother's got his hat cocked for you. He's harmless, but if he's a bother, say the word and I'll set him straight."

 _Did you ever talk to Rosh about their games in the hayloft? I think you did, because I don't think giving each other up was as quick or easy for them as she says._ "I can handle him," she said. "He likes new things."

The young man raised his eyebrows at that, but only turned back to their peephole. He perked up. "They're comin out."

A knot of people appeared at the top of the ramp, talking. She could see Mal, and the three Alliance officials, but it was difficult to discern who else had come to see the visitors off. The officials, she noted, were doing a great deal of nodding, and that nodding got faster and more energetic the longer Mal talked. To her, they now seemed as impatient to get away as, earlier, they had been to confront someone.

 _Three dogs follow their noses to a hole in the cliff, but the cat-smell belongs to something bigger than they expected._

The three officials stepped down the ramp, and River saw Shepherd Book standing with Mal at the top of the ramp, smiling benignly down on them. He gave a friendly little wave to them, which they did not return as they hurried to their vehicle.

When the aircar had lifted and dwindled away, River pulled the shed doors open and marched to the ship, Matt trailing behind her. At the bottom of the ramp, she said, "I thought everything was already settled."

"It was," the captain replied, "till some midlevel with Three Planets Mining and Manufacturing lodged a complaint with the Port Authority. Seems your little jaunt forced a reroute that made him late for a meeting."

"Oh, gasp," said Matt under his breath. "Heads will roll for this."

"No, but we might have got our shuttles grounded."

The Shepherd smiled thinly. "Not likely, once you explained that one of those shuttles was the home office of a Registered Companion."

"Wasn't enough to get us out of the cookpot. They still wanted to talk to the pilot and check his paperwork."

River knew that, although Mal and Zoë were competent ship drivers and capable beacon navigators, their training was informal and experience-based; Wash was the only licensed interplanetary pilot aboard. And if that license were revoked or suspended, there were a great many places where _Serenity_ would be forbidden docking – including Persephone.

"However," said the captain, "when the Shepherd stepped up, goin over our paperwork with a magnifying glass seemed to interest them a lot less."

"People like a man of God," the old man said diffidently.

River grinned. "Preacher man, you _lied_?"

"The Lord commands us not to bear false witness against our neighbors. But there's nothing in the Bible about bearing false witness _for_ a neighbor." He smiled faintly. "I didn't have to lie very hard. I just made a few vague statements, and let them draw their own conclusions."

"Well," said Mal, "you can bet as soon as they get back to their fancy office, they'll be heatin up the message beacons to Londinium."

"And they'll find that I was issued a pilot's license decades ago, though I haven't renewed it in years. I'll be given a stern warning, no doubt, and maybe a small fine to pay, but it won't be much. Just a formality." He paused. "But there will be some questions about the incident I'll be expected to have answers for. And I really haven't flown in a very long time. I'll need some coaching before the hearing."

"Hearing?" Said Matt. "When?"

"Three days." Mal said to River in his most captain-y voice, "And till this shakes out, that shuttle doesn't stir. Dong le ma?"

"Ma dong," she said, heart sinking.

His voice softened. "If Inara gets back before then, we'll take Number One out for a few orbits. _After_ filin all the traffic-control fei lao they're sure to shovel at us."

-0-

Jayne had searched the charcoal factory's grounds and buildings for clues. He had picked the Hensons' brains, both for details of the outfit's operations and for terrain features such an enterprise would need for those operations. He had studied his blurry maps, looking for the closest likely spots for the operation to move to. But there was still too much he didn't know.

Something seemed to be off about Ames's maps besides their focus. He knew better than to look for buildings among the foliage in the fuzzy images, but the areas cleared of trees ought to show, and there were none anywhere near. Even the camp they had visited, once he located it on the map, looked no different from the trackless forest surrounding, aside from the natural clearing. You'd think that from above, the second-growth stuff would look different from the older stands of trees, but there was no transition at all. And the weed-dotted clearing on the other side of the stream, with its row of buildings and blackened circles surrounding the kettles, was nowhere in sight on the top-down views.

The closest clearing that showed on the map was only a day's march away. But it was situated on the flank of a mountain; after the loggers had cleared the immediate area, they'd be lugging their wood upslope in every direction. And it was far from water. Next closest spot, miles farther away in the opposite direction, was located in a saddle, and likely had a stream running through it. Men had to drink, Jayne thought. But if he guessed wrong, it would add days to their travels that no one wanted to spend.

The camp they had come upon was located in a saddle with a stream. Men were creatures of habit. He chose the second option.

-0-

Wash said, "You know, I always meant to ask. Where did you learn to weld?"

Zoë didn't answer right away, being half through laying down a bead reconnecting the overhead strut by which an overhead module, presently hanging by its cable, was supposed to be attached. The tip of the welder sizzled white-hot, the light making the eye lenses of her face shield seem to glow. When she finished, she tossed her head to flip the mask up, and regarded her husband, who was working with his hands inside a bridge console a few steps away. "The Army. Some crosstraining feihua, guess they thought they might need a lot of heavy-equipment repairmen in a hurry." She moved behind him to the welding rig, rolling up her cable as she went. Wash couldn't turn to see, but he could hear her stowing the cable and powering down the equipment.

He _hmph_ ed and went back to his task, plugging in the electronic module he had just replaced. The work was all being done by feel, since he was working elbow-deep in the console. Fortunately, the half-dozen plugs were all different shapes and sizes, so mixing them up wasn't a possibility.

He smiled as he found another connection and seated it. _Another fistful of sparky wires gone._ The original design of _Serenity's_ command, communication and control suite had been modular: easy and quick to repair, if you had the cash for replacement modules when they wore out. But after generations of ownership by fly-by-nighters like Mal Reynolds, the ship's C3 systems were full of dead modules and dodgy workarounds that reduced the ship's performance and responsiveness. Of all the people aboard who knew which end of a control yoke to grab, only Wash could fly the old girl in atmo with precision and grace. But if Ames's money held out long enough to replace all the black boxes under the hood and dial them in, _Serenity_ was going to become a lot more nimble and user-friendly.

Still behind him, Zoë added, "Never used it, though. Alliance turned out to be a lot better at taking out our armor than we ever would have guessed. Our tanks were near gone by our second or third battle, and most of our rolling transport too. Before long, the Army started shoving guns in the mechanics' hands cause there was nothing left for them to work on."

Wash's hands clenched around their bundles of wires. As a pilot for the Alliance Navy, his first – and only – combat assignment had been with a ground-attack squadron. On his very first mission, as he had jinked and dodged Rebel fire at treetop level on his way to servicing his target, a sudden malfunction had sent his craft into a power dive straight into the ground. He had spent the rest of the War either in a prison camp, a Core World hospital, or a Navy classroom, without firing a shot except in training. Unless his craft had fallen on someone when he crashed, he hadn't hurt anybody in combat.

But his primary target that day had been a vehicle repair-and-resupply depot, and his secondary the barracks and staging area adjoining it, carrying an ordnance load guaranteed to turn the tanks to scrap and everything else to ash. At the height and speed which he was trained to do his runs, people were almost impossible to see; his targets were vehicles and structures, and it had been easy to think of them as objects no different from the mockups on the practice range. No doubt, if he had completed his mission, he would have whooped at the sight of the fireball behind him, and celebrated with his friends at the O-club afterward.

Wash had never asked Zoë if she had been part of the battle on Taylor. But that didn't stop him from imagining her in one of those camps, diving futilely for cover at the sound of his craft screaming in with its load of death.

"Wai." Her arms rested on his shoulders, wrists crossed over his heart. "I'm right here."

He took a breath and let it out in a huff. "How did you know?"

"I can tell when you've got that look on your face, even when your back is turned." Her cheek brushed his ear. "If I'd been there, I might have been riding one of our antiaircraft guns, doing my damnedest to blow you out of the sky. I think about that, but not much. Now is more important than might-have-been." She pulled gently at his earlobe with her lips, and started nuzzling the side of his neck.

Wash swallowed. "Lambytoes, I've got my hands in a box full of live wires."

"Sounds exciting," she breathed into his ear. "But it still seems like a waste of a _particularly_ good set of hands." She chuckled softly. "We both know, if I let you finish up first, you'll still check your work three times before you close that cover."

Wash's breathing roughened, and he realized he had lost count of the plugs he still needed to connect.

"Always meant to ask," she murmured. "Where did you learn electronics? Your little blonde mechanic? What else did she teach you?"

"I learned this stuff after I got out of the camp. I kind of wanted to be able to tell for myself whether something was fixed right." His fingers searched for an errant cable. "And, by the way, she was nearly your height."

"So you always liked em tall." Her hand slipped inside his floral shirt, and her fingers stroked his nipple. "Bet I know why, too. It's a mystery to me, that a man can look at a woman, and only be interested in one part of her."

"I love every bit of you," he said. "Including what's behind your eyes. You know that. I'm just especially fond of those legs."

"Hm." Her knee rose, brushing the inside of his thigh till it bumped his pigu, then slid aside, her thigh stroking his hip in reminder of where it had been last night. "The legs are pretty fond of you too."

Wash released his work, pulled his forearms out of the panel, turned, and circled her waist in his arms. "The door. Kaylee might walk in on us."

"Not gonna happen," she said, unbuttoning his shirt and sliding it off his shoulder. "I'm fair certain she'll hear us first."

-0-

Royce Henson faced Jayne squarely from two paces' distance, his sons behind him, all in the same dark mood. "All right," he said, "got any more ideas?"

"He was right," Simon said. He looked around at the blackened clearing that still smelled faintly of smoke, and at the rolling ground all around, stubbled with stumps as far as he could see. "They just moved on before we got here."

"They could be anywhere now," said Dell, knuckles whitening on his rifle. "Hell, we might be farther away now than before we set out."

"Doubt it," said Jayne. "Notice somethin missin?" he kicked at the sooty soil and looked over the ring of black circles all around. "Looks like those cookers don't wear out at every camp. Was me, I wouldn't haul em any farther than I had to."

"So." Garrod looked from his father to Jayne. "Start all over, looking for the next likely spot?"

"And the next one after that?" Dell put in. He was about to say more, but his father gave him a dark look, and the boy subsided.

"I don't like the lost time either," the big merc said. "They'll be at the next one, for sure."

"Sure," said Dell, his neutral tone more disquieting than a shout.

"They will," Simon insisted. "The undergrowth here has just begun to come back. They haven't been gone long."

Royce said, "You an expert on plant growth now?"

"I saw what you called fifteen years' worth of it at the last site," the doctor said evenly. "How long do _you_ think they've been gone?"

The father shrugged. "Six months, maybe a year."

"And you have to season cut wood for a year before you can burn it, don't you?"

"They wouldn't have twiddled their thumbs for a whole season," Garrod said. "No charcoal, no profit. They were probably at the next site cutting and stacking a year before the last one played out."

Jayne grunted and headed for the curved row of buildings that partly circled the burned ground. Simon, feeling the Hensons' eyes on him, followed.

The big merc's destination appeared to be a pair of somewhat larger buildings in the center of the row. Simon fell in beside him. "What are you looking for?"

"Somethin that was at the last camp. If it's here too, we got a way in."

"A way in?"

They reached the first of the two shacks. "We ain't gonna just march inta that logging camp shoutin questions. The hwundan might have friends there – or men who think they are, anyway. We gotta go in, find out what we wanna know, an get out quiet like." He pulled open the door, looked inside, and grunted, nodding.

Simon put a head inside. The cabin was divided into two rooms, front and back. In the front room, a long table ran along one wall, with just enough room to stand or sit between. Through the open doorway connecting the rooms, he saw a similar table placed in the center of the back room.

Jayne was already on his way to the second building. This one's door was standing open, with leaves and dirt drifted into the opening. He passed inside, and Simon followed.

The walls of the front room of this shack were lined floor to ceiling with shelves. A tall counter with a solid front stood beside the door. Jayne opened the door between rooms. The back room was lined with shelves as well.

Jayne turned to the doctor. "Know what you're lookin at?"

"A storeroom?" He glanced at the counter. "No. A store."

"Right. And the other shack's an office, I'm guessin." The big merc went on, "Company store's a good idea, in a setup in the middle a nowhere like this. Gives a man a chance to pick up stuff he can't get any other way, and it lets the company get back some of their money. Bet it brings in folks just passin by, too."

Simon nodded. "So that's our way in. But do you think we'll get our answers from the clerk at the trading post?"

"Prolly not. But that's just the start." He leaned against the door sill. "Think about what Garrod said. About the crew."

"He said they'd send men out to the next site in advance, to lay in a supply of dry wood for when they move."

"And what's the rest of the crew doin while they're doin that?"

Simon frowned. "Still cutting trees at the old site – no." He thought a moment longer. "They'd be cutting wood they'll never burn, unless they take it with them."

"Ayuh. Kinda defeats the purpose, neh?"

He thought it through. The loggers must stockpile wood, a year's supply of it, for the last year of their operations. Then when they first arrived at the new camp, they'd build a second woodpile for later, while they made charcoal of the stuff the advance party had laid in. That would assure them of a ready supply of wood in case of unforeseen events as well.

But after that, how did they keep the kilns fed? For ease of transport, the cutting would start nearest the camp and move outward, travel times increasing with distance from the camp. That meant ever-decreasing charcoal production, or…

He said to Jayne, "They can't maintain their output without continually expanding the crew, right up until distance makes the payroll costs of cutting and hauling the wood cancel the profit from the venture. Then they pick a new spot to harvest, start burning their stockpile, and send the cutting crew out to start the process all over again."

The big merc nodded. "And that means they'll be hirin."

-0-

It was the smell that led them to it.

Simon watched Jayne spread his map across his knees for the third time since they had left the second logging camp. Again, they had moved toward water and easy transport. But according to the map, there were several small clearings in this direction suitable for landing a truck, and none of the sites' topographies had a clear advantage or disadvantage. Jayne supposed the loggers might pick the one closest to where they were shipping the charcoal, but they didn't know where that was.

The big merc muttered as he shook the map and turned it in his hands. "I'm a bettin man, but I ain't no gambler. I like the odds in my favor. And I'm startin to feel like I'm playin a rigged game."

"What is it?"

"These gorram maps. Can't even find where ya are on em, much less something you're lookin for."

"He explained that."

"Yeah, well, I think he stopped a little short in his explainin." Jayne's finger touched a spot in the map's mottled greenery. "This is where we are, about. Meadow's here. So how come we don't see the cleared trees?"

"I guess the map isn't recent enough to show them."

"Ayuh. So how old is it?" His finger slid westward to a grassy spot devoid of trees. "That's their earlier camp." His fingertip circled the spot. "How come these trees ain't cleared?"

"There were trees when we went through," Simon reminded him. "Second growth, but plenty of them. Maybe the difference doesn't show from above, at least not through damaged optics."

"Look again, Three Percent. Here's the stream we crossed. Remember what was on the other side?"

"Oh, right." The row of buildings had been there, flanked by the meadow and a burned clearing that still didn't support any greenery. And the big kettles had been standing in a row in the clearing's center. He nodded. "The map predates that camp, then. Ten or twelve years, plus however long the loggers were there."

The big man's voice lowered further, almost to a growl. "And now that we know that…" The blunt fingertip traveled westward on the map, back the way they had come, to a familiar spot that changed abruptly from green to black. "Look closer."

It was the crater where Kaylee and Mina had been imprisoned. Simon studied the rough-edged black circle, then the gray ellipse of cleared land at its center, then the blurry rectangle of the shack's roof near the middle. It was still just as indistinct as ever. "What-"

"Don't stare so hard. Just look," said the tracker.

Simon took a little mental step back, trying to look at the whole site at once. All he saw was the black glass of the crater, the mottled gray of the cleared area, the darker gray of the weathered shingles and the shack's shadow on the ground…

Simon realized he was holding his breath, and let it out in a long soft exhale. "Shadows," he almost whispered. "Outside."

"Ayuh. Prolly just wash on the line along the side there, but…" Jayne's finger hovered over a spot behind the shack, as if unwilling to actually touch it. There was a shadow there too, rather like a nail paring. "There was a whole row of those when Kaylee was there. Ever hear when the first girl disappeared?"

"More than twenty years ago," he said. "But less than twenty-five, I think."

"Well, it looks like the umhuo finished with the first one and got another, judgin by the cairn and the clothesline." He snatched up the map and shook it. "So what the hell is Ames playin at, sendin us out to look for his kid with maps twenty years outta date?"

Simon felt ice in his spine. _Could it be…_ But then another idea came to him, one that the mind didn't recoil from. "Maybe… these are the best maps he has." He went on quickly, before Jayne could interrupt. "He said the satellites are mostly dead. Maybe the one that overlooks the Woods has been down for that long." He went on, "When Ames bought the license to manage the network, it probably came with the ground-based hardware too, computers and such. That would include the database, all the satellite observations since they were put up. The Alliance wouldn't have any use for it, once the terraforming project was complete."

Jayne's brow knitted as he thought it through. "The topo maps, and the ones that show where the lodes are…"

"They wouldn't change. They're still accurate, whether they're five years old or fifty."

"Then that hwundan knows where all the lodes are arready. He's known since he bought the sats."

"Yes," Simon said. "Doubtless he edits most of that information out on the maps, so he can parcel out the strikes over time instead of giving them away all at once, to keep prices from crashing."

"Messin with the supply for profit," Jayne said. "That's Core World thinkin."

Simon shook his head. "He's not cheating his customers, Jayne. He's helping them, as well as himself. If he released those maps unaltered, every man on New Home who owned a shovel would be in the Woods digging up ore. It would glut the market, and they'd be forced to sell at a fraction of true value. A year later, the area would be played out, and everyone would be broke. Doing it Ames's way benefits everyone, by providing a stable price and a steady income."

Jayne tilted a head toward the Hensons, fixing a cold meal by the stream and filling canteens. "Doubt they'd see it that way."

"No," he said. "Maybe we shouldn't tell them. Ames is going to make them rich, but he won't get any gratitude from them for it."

The big merc smoothed the map out again, his expression dark. "Bet the prospectors just shrug off the feioo resolution on the aerial views, cause it ain't what's important to em. That's damn convenient, considerin the gag'd fall through if they was clear enough to make out details. Ya think maybe?"

"It could be just as he said," the doctor allowed. "The sats have been up there a long time, and the sky above New Home is probably full of grit. I don't think any of the other sensing equipment uses lenses."

"Hope you're right." Jayne folded the map and stowed it in his pocket. "Wouldn't like ta think Ames held his business secrets higher than his little girl's life."

-0-

"Hold up." Jayne shrugged out of his big pack and set it upright on the ground against the trunk of a toppled tree.

The deep forest they were presently traveling was mature growth: big trees, wide-spaced, whose greenery filled the sky overhead and left the ground in perpetual shade. The ground was mostly clear of brush, soft and springy with a thick carpet of leaves and occasional dead branches. The rest of the posse, spread out instead of walking in line, slowed to a halt and approached the big merc as he drew his maps out of his pack. Dell grumbled as Jayne sat on the trunk and unfolded the paper across his knees. "You can't change a deuce into an ace by starin at it, Cobb."

"Aright. We're about here," Jayne said, ignoring the boy; to Simon's eye, the big man was looking tired in a way that had little to do with sleep or exercise. "Got three spots look good for their next camp, and we're about equal walkin distance from all of em right now." He indicated the spots, lying in an irregular north-south line to the east. His finger touched the southernmost, the closest. "This one's closest as the crow flies, but there's a mountain between."

"I see it," said Garrod. "So what do we do? Flip a coin?"

Jayne looked up from the map, taking them all in. "I'm open to suggestions."

"This one." Dell's finger poked the middle site. "The way our luck's been running, we won't guess right the first time. That way, we'll lose the same amount of time on the next try."

"And if we guess wrong a second time? We've doubled the length of the third trip." Royce indicated the southern site again. "More, really. This one's only an equal walk right now because we're lined up with a pass over the mountain. From either of the other two places, we might as well go around to get there. That's days extra, maybe another week."

"If we go there first, it's the same extra walk to the other camps." Garrod scratched as his new beard. "Seems the likeliest choice – it's the one most like the other camps – but I sure would like better odds than one-in-three before I settle on it."

"We don't even know if these guys got something to tell us." Dell started to pace, gesturing as he spoke; one arm swept around him in a wide arc. "We been messin around in these woods for a week, and the hundan could still be _anywhere_!"

"You thought this was gonna be easy?" Jayne folded the map up, a little crookedly, and stuffed it roughly back into the pack; Simon was glad that it was printed on material a bit tougher than paper. "If catchin this umhuo was _easy_ , ya think they'd a let him keep stealin kids for twenty years?"

"So long as they weren't the wrong kids," muttered Garrod. "The Feds would have burned the Wood to catch him, if they'd found some Core World exec's little girl under one of them cairns." He flicked a glance at Simon.

 _And there it is again_ , the doctor thought. Simon was no stranger to friction between himself and his co-workers. Both as a gifted student at the top of the class rankings and as a child of wealth and standing, he had dealt with plenty of jealousy and resentment in MedAcad's status-obsessed and cutthroat-competitive environment. He knew he had a reputation for being difficult to work with as well: he was intolerant of sloppy work, and angered by mistakes that could be avoided by study and preparation. He had learned that the best way to handle negative attitudes toward him was to ignore them – unless they actually interfered with quality of care. Then, a showdown was the only recourse, even if it meant not being on speaking terms outside of work with someone ever again.

"Don't expect me to argue the case for the Alliance, Garrod," he said. "Just believe me when I say that it doesn't care who you are – rich, poor, Core Worlder or Rim rat – if you have something it wants, or if you get in its way." He took a deep breath, about to say more, then stopped. He lifted his head, nostrils flaring. "Do you smell that?"

"Smell what?"

"It's the same odor that was all over the last site. Like burning wood, but different."

"Prolly just stuck to your clothes," Royce suggested. "I don't smell anything." The elder Henson glanced around at the others for confirmation.

Jayne inhaled slowly, exhaled, inhaled again. "Dunno. Maybe. Maybe I just want to."

Simon lifted his eyes to the greenery roofing them off from the sky. "If I can climb a tree, I can get above the canopy and take a good look around."

Jayne looked doubtful. "You ever climb a tree?"

"Since I was a child," he said. "River too." _Though not for years, and never one ten stories tall. This is going to be a little different from stealing apples out of the neighbor's orchard._

Garrod said, "Considerin what we come here to do, a doctor might come in handy later, if he hasn't already fallen out of a gorram tree. Maybe somebody else -"

"I'm the lightest," Simon said. "I have the best chance of getting high enough to see something." He turned and started up the gentle slope. "It's a little late to start coddling me, don't you think?"

Once he reached high ground, he began looking for a likely tree. He couldn't gauge the forest giants' heights through the canopy, so he selected his tree by trunk girth, judging that the thickest one would also be the tallest. Like all the trees in this part of the forest, its lowest branches were six or eight meters from the ground.

Simon let out a breath, shrugged out of his pack, and removed from it the hatchet Rosh had provided him, which he had been using on the trip to dress firewood. At knee height, he chopped a flat-bottomed notch big enough to stick all the fingers of one hand into. The others came up as he was finishing. He said, "Give me your belts."

Garrod and Royce reached for their buckles. Dell said, "Whatcha want with our belts?"

"I know." Garrod put the tongue of his belt through his father's, making a double-length leather strap. "Do it, Dell. Hurry up."

Simon began cutting a second notch, this one at shoulder height. By the time he was finished, Garrod had all three belts put together and laid around the tree. He brought the free ends around the doctor's back and buckled them. "Ready to try it out?"

Simon nodded and put a toe into the lowest notch. He gripped the belt with a hand on either side and straightened, lifting him a meter off the ground, then snapped the belt upward and leaned against it, holding it – and him – in place. "Too far. Shorten it a bit."

Garrod pulled more leather through each buckle and re-fastened it, until Simon could touch the tree with his hand while keeping the band taut. Simon cut another notch, even with his waist, and put his lowest foot into it. He repeated the process, bringing him a full man-height off the ground.

"Looks rickety as hell," Jayne grumbled.

"I have to reach that bottom limb somehow," he said. "And I left my rocket boots back on Osiris." He began chopping the next notch.

Dell said, "They got rocket boots on Osiris?"

Garrod said, "See, this is why Pa never lets you go to town by yourself."

Simon worked his way up the tree, falling into a steady rhythm: chop the notch, put a foot in, lean forward slightly until the belt just slackened, then flip the strap upward as you raise yourself up. He resisted the temptation to hurry the process, making sure each notch was deep and wide enough to comfortably get the ball of his foot into; he was all too conscious of the fit of his borrowed boots. Half a lifetime of training as a surgeon had taught him to be methodical, and to spurn shortcuts. He tried to keep the bottoms of the notches level or angled slightly downward into the wood. He was very aware that, if his foot slipped out of its hold at the wrong moment, nothing would stop his fall but the ground. Eventually, with his right arm and shoulder aching and his legs trembling and his lower back rubbed raw from the belts, Simon's upper arm was brushing against the lowermost branch.

Here, he was faced with a problem. He couldn't climb higher than the branch with the band around him. He could haul himself up on the limb, but he couldn't let the belt drop because he would need it for his descent. To hang it off the limb, he would have to unfasten it; to Simon, that presented an unacceptable risk of losing it. Maybe he could reach a little farther around the trunk and bury the hatchet's head with the handle within reach of the limb. Then he could let go of the belt as he hoisted himself onto the branch, and the belt would drop onto the handle and hang there until

 _Pup- voooot._

The belt jerked and came apart, and he was falling backwards. Simon twisted toward the limb and leaped, getting one arm over it. He wrapped his arms around it and clung, feet swinging, while shouts came up to him from below.

"Simon!" Jayne's voice.

"I'm okay," he called, his voice rather muffled because of his chin being ground tight into the bark of the tree limb. He swung sideways and managed to get a knee on top. He pulled himself on top of the limb and looked down while he caught his breath. His four companions' upturned faces were pale blobs against the dark background of the forest floor.

"Ai ya. Damn hatchet landed a foot from my boot."

"Sorry," Simon said. "I didn't realize I let go of it till now."

"Yeah, well, you were a little busy."

He sat up, straddling the limb. "It occurs to me now, how yuh bun duh it was that none of us brought any rope."

"Yeah, hindsight's allus twenty-twenty."

"Looks like one of the belts stretched a little, and let the prong slip through the stirrup of the buckle," Garrod said. "Not sure it'd be safe to use now, even if we could get it up to you."

Jayne said, "Ichi shen hushi. Just swalla your heart and sit tight while we figure out a way to get ya down."

Simon braced himself against the trunk and stood. The next branch was at shoulder height, half a meter away. He jumped and got his upper body on it, then pulled himself up. "I'm sure you'll think of something before I'm back."

The climbing got easier as Simon ascended. The limbs grew thinner and closer together, making them easier to reach and grab. He picked up his pace. After a while, he looked up and down and was unable to see either the ground or the sky, only branches.

The trunk began to sway gently. Simon could hear the surf-like sound of wind in the trees, and occasionally feel the faintest stir of air on his cheek. And the smell he had noticed on the ground became stronger.

About the time it started getting difficult to find a branch that seemed large enough to support his weight, Simon noticed that his surroundings had brightened considerably from the gloom of the forest floor. He began getting glimpses of the world around him through the foliage. Most of what he saw though the swaying curtain of leaves was still green, but sometimes he saw bits of sky as well.

Finally, he could climb no further. He still wasn't in the open, but he seemed to have picked a tree that poked above the canopy, and he could see through the leaves fairly well. Simon was unsure of his direction, having circled and zigzagged across the trunk of the tree on the way up. The hazy daylight coming through the trees was no help. But remembering the topo features of Jayne's map, he tried to orient himself by what he saw through the gaps in the foliage as he worked his way around the tree.

In three directions, the landscape was a roiled ocean of deep green, flowing down and away. Toward what he took to be southeast, the trees pushed up into the sky on the back of the ridge. The wind seemed to be coming from that direction; Simon peered at the ridge, and saw a thick haze of cloud drifting over the top from the other side, dissipating long before it reached him, but remaining heavy as it flowed over the ridge. _Not cloud. Smoke._

The descent was rather trickier than going up, and took longer. The day's end was nearing as Simon reached the bottom limb of the tree. "I'm back," he called down into the gloom.

"We heard ya comin," Jayne called up. Simon could just make out the movements of his companions gathered beneath him. they were holding the four corners of a blanket, stretched out.

Simon eyed the makeshift safety net critically. "No offense, but I don't think that's going to break a fall from eight meters."

"You think we're stupid?" Dell called up.

Jayne said, "This is just ta slow you down a little. We're holdin it over a six-foot hole filled with layers of blankets and dead leaves. It'll work. Just drop down on it, nice and easy."

He swallowed, eyed the tiny rectangle of fabric, and crouched. He leaned forward, and his feet slid off the branch. The blanket rushed up at him. He hit it feetfirst and took it with him, and he was swallowed in darkness smelling of dead leaves.

"Wai. You okay?" Jayne's voice, right above him.

"I think so," he said. "I may be a little shorter now." He squirmed and got an arm out, and the big merc grasped it and hauled him out like a doll.

The others gathered around as the doctor brushed off his clothes. Jayne said, "Well?"

"There's a thick stream of smoke coming over the ridge from the other side," Simon said. "It's not moving or spreading like a forest fire would. I think it's charcoal kilns."


	9. Chapter 9

On the other side of the ridge, almost where it bottomed out at a swift little stream, the trees ended. From the edge of the woods, the posse peered out across the landing field into the charcoalers' camp at the center of a cleared circle five hundred yards across. Being slightly above it, they could look down and see most of the operation, arranged in concentric rings around a circle of six kilns at the center. The cooking operation was partly obscured by a thick column of white cloud billowing up, bending sharply as it cleared the treetops and passing almost over their heads as it headed upslope to crest the ridge and abruptly disappear.

Jayne studied the cloud, which looked as solid as an anvil. "Where the hell's it go?"

"It's mostly water vapor, not smoke," Royce said. "The wind pushes it up the hill, and at the top the air must change somehow – humidity, pressure, temperature, something – and it just gets absorbed." He said to Simon, "Hadn't been for that stunt you pulled, we'd a never seen it." He pointed at one of the kilns: a shirtless man stood inside, shoveling the black residue over the metal wall into a hopper; then to another, where men on ladders passed wood up to pack inside. "That's with just one or two cookers lit up at a time. They take all day to burn, then a day or three to cool enough to shovel out the charcoal. So they do em in relays."

The camp was larger than Simon had expected, and busier. He could hear the _whock_ of axes and the high-pitched shriek of cutting bars, and the occasional grunting whine of some straining machine. Several wheeled mules like _Serenity's_ pulled trailers across the cleared ground.

He heard a series of loud crunches and pops, and at the edge of the cleared space a third of the way around the circle, a tree swayed, twisted, and fell into the cleared zone. Men clambered over it, stripping the limbs, cutting them into half-meter lengths, and packing them into a mule's trailer.

While most of the cutting crew went to work on the waist-thick trunk, four men took the mule inward, to one of the walls of stacked logs partly encircling the ring of kilns, and added their load of green lumber at one end. At the other end, fifty meters distant, men removed seasoned logs and fed them to a splitter, restacking the pieces on another wall just a few steps away. Simon saw that the whole process of stacking and restacking would make a slow circle around the kilns, staying close for easy feeding of the fires.

"They all look like they know what they're doing," Royce observed. "See anybody looks like he's givin orders to a new hand?"

"How long you spose it takes to teach a man to stack wood?" Jayne retorted. He gave the scene another look and turned back into the woods a few steps, shrugging out of his pack. "I'm goin in. Sit tight while I nose around."

"Are you sure about this?" Simon said. "Going in alone?"

"A group comin in and hirin on would prick up ears," Jayne said as he set his pack on the ground and opened it, going through its contents. "Specially if they all start askin the same questions." He glanced up at Simon. "Got any money?"

The doctor lifted an eyebrow. "Out of all the people here, you think I'm the one most likely to be carrying a wad of cash on a trip into the woods?" After another moment under the merc's steady gaze, he said, "Credits or platinum?"

"Both. The store prolly takes credits, but I might need platinum for other stuff."

"Bribes, you mean." The doctor reached into a small side pocket.

"Somethin like that. Won't use it unless I have to. I wanna get in and outta there without leavin a trail."

"I could go," said Garrod. "Why you?"

"Cause I'm more the type they'd likely hire." At the young man's look he said, "I know you're good for a day's work. But loggin's a job for a strong back and big arms and not a lot of imagination. And I don't think you could convince em you're just there for a job. I got some practice playin dumb-but-useful." He tossed the comlink to Royce. "Don't wanna get caught with that, even if it don't work. Dell, gimme that skillet to hang off my pack. You need to keep a cold camp, and I need to look like I'm travelin alone."

Jayne unbuttoned his flannel shirt and slipped it off, leaving him bare-chested. Simon watched him pull a heavy short-sleeved shirt out of his pack: it seemed to have an overlapping arrangement of stiff plates sewn into it. "Is that body armor?"

"Callin it 'armor' is a bit of a stretch." The big merc held the garment out in front of him and shook it. "Won't stop a rifle bullet, or even a sharp knife with a grown man's weight behind it. But it works fine against shrapnel or pistol shots at a distance, and it sorta stiffens up when you hit it with an axe handle or a table leg."

Royce said, "So, it keeps you from taking much hurt from somebody who's not actually trying to hurt you much."

"Ayuh." He turned it in his hands, examining it. "Woulda saved me some stitches the day your sister made her fashion statement with that butcher knife."

The Hensons looked at one another. Simon quickly said, "Why haven't I seen it before? Don't you wear it on every job?"

"Nah. Doesn't breathe. You sweat in it even when it's cold. Just don't seem worth the bother, usually." He slipped the heavy garment over his head. "But I don't know what I'm walkin into down there. Mebbe I'll be back by sundown, with three hot meals in me an some good intel. Or I may be gone three days and come back with nothin. Or mebbe an hour from now I'll be runnin back up this hill with a pack of em on my heels, like dogs after a fox. Seems smart not to take chances I don't need to." He shrugged back into his flannel shirt and buttoned it up. While he tucked it in and bloused it out to conceal the garment underneath, he said to them, "You hear shots, keep a sharp eye, but don't come chargin down there. Let me handle it."

"Modesty was never your tall suit," said Simon.

"I just mean that somethin I can't get myself out of is prolly nothin you're gonna shoot your way into and back out again. We all get kilt or taken, that girl's gone for good, and Ames'll take the ship for breakin our contract." He stood and settled the pack. "'Twere best done quickly. The cutting crew gets here before I do, move a quarter around behind em. Royce, if that piece a feioo starts workin again, tell em what's goin on and try to set up a supply drop outta sight of the camp. Dang shin." He started downslope and left the trees, walking across the field.

Simon stared after him. "The man constantly surprises me."

"What?" Royce said, tapping the com against the heel of his hand. "Everything he said made sense. You're not used to that?"

"I'm getting used to it," he said. "But I don't think I can ever get used to hearing him quote Shakespeare."

-0-

Shepherd Book's hearing was scheduled in the Federal office building at the county seat, which was about twenty miles distant from Millersburg, the town nearest the Frye homestead. He insisted on presenting himself alone at the meeting, despite protests from most of the crew and no few of the Fryes. Though they thought he was being gallant, his motives were rather more pragmatic: he thought that there might be certain topics, and certain negotiations, that he wouldn't want them to hear. So the captain and Jim Frye delivered him to the Millersburg bus depot and agreed to wait at a nearby café with Cortex service, so that he might call for pickup on his way back.

When Book arrived for his appointment at the fancy glass-and-concrete structure with the Federal emblem over the wide doorway, he had expected to be directed to an upper-floor office of the sort favored by bureaucrats everywhere. Instead, he was met in the lobby by a rather nervous young female staffer and led through several ground-floor hallways toward the rear of the building. After several minutes of walking down an empty service corridor with piping running along the walls instead of murals of Core World progress, Book began to wonder if his 'interview' was going to be conducted in a storeroom on the loading dock. Then it occurred to him that this was a part of the building where someone could enter or leave unnoticed. His alert level rose a notch.

Book studied the young woman walking beside him. She was clearly uncomfortable as she led him down the narrowing hallways, but the old man in the clerical garb didn't seem to be the source of her unease. Book decided that it was something about their destination, rather than her companion, that was making her feel threatened.

Finally, they arrived at a door, and his guide gestured him through, shutting it behind him.

The space was small and looked more like a break room than a conference chamber. The single occupant who sat waiting at the small table was not one of the officials who had visited the ship. He was Asiatic, something of a rarity on New Home, which made the old preacher suspect the man was an offworlder. He was plainly dressed, but Book could see the quality of his garments, and knew that this man was rather higher up the bureaucratic food chain than the previous interviewers.

The official rose and bowed slightly over the table. "Good morning, Shepherd. Qing jin. Please forgive the venue for this meeting, but as you know, this is a minor business, and the more formal rooms are presently occupied with weightier affairs."

Book dipped his head. "Of course." _Then why isn't some clerk conducting the hearing? And, minor it may be, but if it's still official business, why isn't there at least a recorder on the table?_ He noted that the man had not offered his name.

"Would you like some refreshment?" He gestured to a pitcher and two glasses at one end of the table within easy reach. "All I can offer is water, I'm afraid."

"Water will be fine, thank you," Book said, resolving to let not a drop of it pass his lips. He sat, and his host followed.

The official placed his elbows on the table and put his fingertips together. "To begin, let me tell you that we have already reinstated your pilot's license. Brought it current, rather, with no gap in certification, so that in the eyes of the law you were fully certified during the … unscheduled flight."

"That's very generous of you," the old man said. _What are you expecting in return?_

The man smiled. "Another formality, really. I've seen the tracking data, and I'm sure you would pass the required test. And we do strive to maintain good relations with the Church." He broke eye contact for an instant, then flicked back.

Book tried a little experiment. He turned his head to the side as he reached for the pitcher and a glass, but watched his companion closely with his peripheral vision. "I'm sure that my bishop will take note of your handling of this matter." The man's eyes flicked to his topknot and away. The old preacher turned back, glass in hand. "I'm equally sure he would like to know the name of such a Good Samaritan." He added, "To add it to the list in his nightly prayers."

The man pursed his lips. "Singh," he said, giving Book the third-commonest non-Western name in the 'Verse. "Bartolemew Singh. But I'm not a member of the Church, I'm afraid."

"No matter," Book said. "God has His eye on us all."

Singh paused, as if assessing that statement, then was all business again. "Well. As I said, your competence at the yoke is not in question. However, any craft's very presence in the sky above New Home presents a risk to others unless properly managed."

"I understand." Book dipped his chin again. "Clearly I've spent too much time on frontier worlds without any traffic to speak of. I hope no one was" He offered Singh the briefest of pauses "threatened by my little jaunt."

"No, no, though a few were … inconvenienced." The man gave Book a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "The case is essentially closed already. But you know how bureaucracies are. There are forms to be completed, and officials must assure their superiors that steps have been taken to prevent such a … misunderstanding from repeating. Your answers to a few questions should facilitate that."

The Shepherd nodded. "I'll help all I can, of course."

"Excellent." The interviewer folded his hands on the table. "First and foremost. What was your purpose in launching _Serenity's_ number-two shuttle and taking it into orbit?"

Book noted that the man had not brought even a pad and pencil to the room. Was there a recording device on his person? If so, he had neglected to fulfill the legal requirement of informing his interviewee. "Nothing but a pleasure excursion, I'm afraid. You know that our ship is having some work done."

"Yes," the man across the table said. "Nothing serious, I hope. You didn't declare an emergency when you entered the system."

"No. Just an overhaul, but an extensive one."

Singh's eyelids lowered. "And of all the places you might have had such work performed, you chose New Home."

 _Aha._ "One of our crew has family here. In fact, her family owns the repair shop. So this is a combination maintenance stop and shore leave. And Frye's repair has offered us generous terms on the work." _Strayed a bit from the topic of traffic control, haven't we?_

Singh nodded. "So, the shuttle flight. A pleasure trip, you said? Not a flight test?"

"No. One of the lads working on the ship expressed an interest. He'd never been above the atmospheric shield." Book smiled. "Can you imagine? He's been working on spaceships for half his life, and never really seen the stars."

The interviewer smiled thinly. "New Home is rather a provincial world, at present."

 _At present?_ New Home had been a quiet agrarian world since it had been terraformed; why would that ever change?

Singh went on, "So. A sightseeing trip." Another smile that didn't reach his eyes. "And what sights did you see?"

Book, careful not to let his suspicions show, said, "As I said, the stars. And Jove, which impressed him a bit." When this stirred no response he went on, "Then I turned the nose around and let him see his home from low orbit."

The man leaned forward, almost imperceptibly; if Book hadn't been looking for it he wouldn't have caught it. "Your flight path didn't cover many sights. A few small towns, a chain of lakes, and the big forest."

Book reflected that an inexperienced interrogator often revealed more with his questions than his subject did with his answers. _I'd bet anything that the location he mentioned last is the one he's interested in._ "Well, it's hard not to circle New Home without crossing the Wood. And he's lived in its shadow all his life. He was fascinated by the different perspective."

"I see." The man shifted. "Well. Clearly there was no criminal intent, and no harm done, aside from raising a few blood pressures. I would say this concludes the hearing. No fines or penalties will be levied…" He looked closely at the Shepherd. "Provided, of course, there are no further unauthorized excursions."

Book nodded. "Of course. We'll be certain to file a flight plan before taking the shuttle up again."

Singh's face smoothed into a mask, blank and unrevealing. His voice was smooth as well. "I'm sure such a request will be met with approval, provided no safety issues or risks to public commerce are involved."

At that moment, Shepherd Book knew that _Serenity's_ shuttles would never be permitted to overfly the Woods again. He rose and offered his hand. "Thank you for your tolerance of an old man's folly. Please be assured that I won't be presenting any more challenges to law enforcement or the public safety."

On the steps outside the entrance, the old preacher paused, considering what to do next. He had not brought his handheld Cortex link with him; he sought out one of the public terminals scattered throughout the downtown district. He sent two messages: the first, to the café in Millersburg, advising Mal of his arrival time; the second, a coded one, to a brother in Southdown Abbey.

Then he initiated a name search, first in the listing of public servants, then in the general directory. According to official records, there were half a dozen Singhs on New Home, but none working for the Port Authority, and none named Bartolemew. He wondered what would happen if he called the Port Authority's offices, identified himself, and asked for Singh. If he was put through, it would tell Book that the man wasn't working alone, at least. But he decided not to raise his prospective quarry's level of suspicion just yet.

Singh had recognized Book's topknot. Taken alone, that could mean many things; combined with the fishing expedition into Book's affairs the man had conducted, and the clandestine nature of their meeting, it could only mean that there was shady business going on in the Woods, something big enough for involvement by at least one Federal official. Whether Singh was part of an investigation, a conspiracy, or a cover-up was still open to question.

On the bus back to Millersburg, the old man considered what resources he might have for pursuing the mystery. The Order had no permanent presence on New Home, and to his knowledge there were no investigations involving it – in truth, the little world didn't seem capable of hosting crimes large enough to warrant the organization's interest. But the Bishop had connections in some very unlikely places…

But the Bishop had given Book firm instructions about what he should and should not do while on his 'sabbatical,' and opening a probe, while not specifically forbidden, flew in the face of the very purpose of Book's leave from the Abbey.

At the bus stop in Millersburg, Mal and Mr. Frye were waiting in the Fryes' little farm truck. Mal said, "How'd it go? Are we off the hook?"

Another thing Book had pondered during the bus ride was how much to tell the captain. "Technically, yes," he said. "But practically…" He recounted the strange interview, leaving out any reference to the Order.

Mal grunted. "I'm no stranger to official inquiries, or unofficial ones either." His eyes flicked to Jim Frye, who was driving, and back to Book. _And neither are you._ "This don't smell right. What do you make of it?"

"Someone suspects that we didn't really come to New Home for repairs," Book said. "There's something going on in those woods that someone, possibly someone in the Federal government, doesn't want brought to light. At least, not yet."

Mister Frye grunted. "So, he didn't _officially_ ground the shuttles. But if you never get permission to take off, it's the same thing."

The Shepherd nodded. "I don't expect any flight plan we file will be approved, even if it doesn't overfly the Wood. But we should try anyway, because he'll be looking for it. Letting Singh think he's tying us up in red tape may be a useful diversion, to keep him from guessing what we're really doing."

Mal said, "And what would that be?"

"Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something."

-0-

He's been down there three days now." Prone on belly and forearms, Dell Henson lowered the binoculars and passed them to Simon, lying beside him. "Don't you think he'd a found out _something_ by now?"

"Maybe he has." Simon lifted the glasses to his eyes and, through a gap in the trees, peered down into the charcoalers' camp. "He's got a talent for getting information out of people. But this time he has to do it without giving away what he's looking for – or even that he's looking for anything besides a paycheck."

"Maybe he's just getting too fond of hot meals down there." Dell stretched. "You see him?"

"Not today." The four of them had watched from the woods as Jayne trekked down to the camp and let himself be directed to the general store. Twenty minutes later, he had come out and ambled toward the office. Ten minutes after that, he had come out with another man and headed for the center of the camp. They had watched him climb over the side of one of the kilns and begin shoveling out charcoal, a hot and dirty job that Simon suspected was the first one given to every new hire. Unlike the other men heaving shovelfuls of charcoal into the waiting hoppers, the big merc hadn't removed his shirt; Simon had wondered if he was now regretting wearing his 'body armor.' In the days since, he had gone from one job to the next until he had covered every activity in the camp – and talked to nearly everyone in it, Simon suspected. "Maybe he's up in the woods with a cutting crew."

Yesterday afternoon, one such crew had approached their camp, just as Jayne had predicted, and the posse had withdrawn into the woods to let them pass. But instead of moving down the crew's backtrail, as Jayne had instructed, the Henson brothers had insisted on staying put – to make them easier for their absent member to find, they said - and their father had gone along with them. Simon was sure Jayne had had a good reason for moving, but he hadn't shared it, and Simon saw no point in abandoning their present position alone. So they lay and watched the camp, with the sound of axes and cutting bars less than a hundred yards distant drifting through the trees.

They continued to take turns sharing the binoculars. Certain that Jayne was working somewhere out of view, and having studied the other workers so carefully that he could now recognize their faces, Simon spent most of his time watching the office and general store for strangers. Finding their quarry coming through the door of either building would simply be too easy, but Simon had little else to do.

A finger tapped his shoulder, and Simon passed the glasses over before he realized Garrod had spelled his younger brother. The man raised the glasses to his eyes. "Anything?"

"No." Without the binoculars, Simon had even less to do. He wondered again about River, if she was staying out of trouble. Why hadn't they brought a backup com?

"So," the elder brother said, "how long have you been with Kaylee's crew?"

"Almost a year," he said. "Does that seem like a long time to you?" Thinking of all the changes that had taken place since he first set foot on _Serenity's_ ramp, and the breathtaking progress of his and Kaylee's courtship – at least to a member of the Twelve Families, whose betrothals generally began before puberty and ended in marriage no sooner than their early twenties.

"Seems like a long time for Kaylee to hang on to one fella," the elder Henson brother said. "Much less make plans for forever with." He lowered the glasses and regarded Simon keenly. "You must have a way with the ladies."

"No, actually." He shrugged uncomfortably. "I – don't have a way with anybody, really."

"Welp, she sees something in you." He turned back to the view and brought the glasses back up. With his eyes firmly in the optics, he said, "Matt and me, we're pretty tight. We did a lot of catching up this visit, and a big part of that talk was about Kaylee, and her post home since she headed out into the Black. So I know a few things Pa and Dell don't – maybe some things her ma and pa don't either."

"Oh?" It wasn't much of a reply, but anything more risked telling this man more than he knew.

"This fella Cobb's not really your captain. Is he?"

Simon quickly sorted facts and deductions in his mind, deciding what to say. "He's in the chain of command," he told Garrod. "He was acting captain when Ames made his offer."

"Hm. And when he's not acting like the captain? What's his job aboard ship?"

"He's a sort of expediter," Simon said. "He makes sure that our transactions go smoothly." _You can't conduct trade without moving crates. And people are less likely to fall into a cheating mood when he's scowling at them with one hand on his knife._

"'Smoothly,' huh? I bet-"

"What the hell are you doin here?" Jayne growled. They looked up over their shoulders to see him standing behind them, hands on hips. "Why ain't you at the ruttin rendezvous?"

They stood, brushing at their clothes. Garrod said, "We thought we should stay put. Make it easier to find."

"Only for somebody wasn't lookin for ya in the first place. I just wasted half my lunch break, trampin around the spot where I told you to go. Instead I find you camped out so close to the cuttin crew, some shagua might stumble over ya just walkin off to take a piss."

Garrod colored. Simon thought it time to change the topic. "So you're going back? Have you learned anything?"

"Ayuh. Got two possibles. I talk to a fella on the other cutting crew tomorrow, maybe I can choose between em and be back tomorrow night."

"So he's been here?" Garrod asked sharply. "Is he down there now? Or maybe coming back?"

Jayne shook his head. "Later," he said. "I wanted to chew this over with ya before I went back, but now there's no time." He turned back toward the woods. "Meantime, you four move to where I told ya. Clean up the tracks you left here. Don't sweep em with a branch, that's ruttin obvious. Use a jacket or a pair a pants, and keep a light touch. You don't wanna smooth out the ground, just blur the tracks so they're hard to recognize and don't look fresh."

"What about-"

"Tomorrow." He headed off into the trees.

Garrod stared after him. "It's been twenty days now since he took her," he said. "I can't hardly fall asleep in my bedroll any more, thinkin about what he's doing to that little girl." He turned to Simon with eyes that were dark and dangerous. "Somethin needs to happen, and gorram quick."

-0-

After supper, Shepherd Book took a slow walk around the Frye homestead, examining the sheds and outbuildings, breathing in the smells from the barnyard and the machine shop as the evening air cooled, and schooling himself to patience. He headed to the ship and, after a brief but unrewarding check for messages on his Cortex link, began exercising in the hold. Without Jayne and Simon, his usual spotters and workout partners, the activity was quiet and rather lonesome, but it gave him a perfect opportunity to think.

But, lacking much evidence to work with, most of his thinking was of the circular sort, centered around the possible content of the reply to his message – provided, of course, that he even received one. Book and Brother Stern went back a ways, almost as far back as his association with Risa, and the man's present position in the Order had been offered by Bishop Sato on Book's recommendation. But the old preacher was sure that Stern would be rather less inclined than Risa to skirt the Bishop's injunctions, especially since the nature and content of Book's message made it clear he was looking for information regarding 'missionary' work. And there might be at least one other reason not to expect much help from him…

"Shepherd?" Wash called down from the top of the open stairway. "There's a call for you on the bridge."

He let go of the bars attached to the overhead grate from which he had been chinning himself and reached for a towel. "Who is it?"

"A friend from the Abbey, he says. But he looks about as monkish as Jayne, topknot or no topknot."

 _Stern. Replying in the clear? Not good._ "The brethren come from all walks of life, much like our crew." He blotted his face and neck as he ascended the stairs. He could hear voices now, and the occasional _tink_ of a tool. It seemed the Hensons had gone back to work after supper.

"So some of the monks are fugitives from justice?"

"Well, not _just_ like," he said as he joined the pilot. "Though I'm fair certain it's not justice Simon and River are fleeing."

"Watch your step," Wash said as he gestured him up the gooseneck. "One of the floor plates is up."

Book stepped around the hole and glanced down. Rosh and Kaylee were back to back in a tight space full of mysterious machine-shapes, talking in low voices. He moved past and took the short flight of steps up to the bridge.

Jim Frye, hands in an open panel beside the door, said, "Give me just a minute, Shepherd, and I can clear out and give you some privacy."

"No need." Long-distance message traffic of all kinds had to pass through the beacon system, which was owned and controlled – and monitored - by the Alliance. The Order employed verbal codes, but they weren't very versatile – or subtle. If Stern had chosen audiovid for a reply instead of a Cortex message, he didn't intend to impart any confidential information.

The com terminal at Wash's station had been upgraded to a thirty-centimeter flatscreen, providing a color image of almost three-dimensional clarity: the head and shoulders of a burly man with a patch over his left eye that matched his gray clerical shirt. The man gave Book a wide smile that didn't reach his remaining eye. " _Derrial. How good to see you, Brother. Not interrupting anything, am I?_ "

"Nothing of importance, compared to seeing you again," Book said, with a smile equally forced.

" _I know we're not supposed to distract you, but you've been on our minds of late, and I couldn't resist calling. How are you enjoying your retirement?_ "

A rather pointed reminder, Book thought. "Oh, I'm not retired, really. I'll be back in God's time. Meanwhile, I'm out in the world, meeting folk and seeing things the brethren have never heard of back at the Abbey." Being as direct as he dared, he added, "I sometimes wish I weren't quite so alone out here, that I had someone among the brethren to share it all with."

The man nodded. " _We're all eager to hear about your adventures, once you're back._ "

That was a clear enough answer: even if the Office had an interest in something out here, or brethren in the vicinity – a very unlikely possibility - it was presently none of Book's business. "Well, hopefully the stories won't have gone stale from the waiting."

" _Oh, I know you, Brother,_ " the man said, his false smile now somewhat faded. " _I know your skill at telling stories. I'm sure the delay will only give you more opportunity to polish them._ "

Heart sinking, Derrial Book said. "Well. Thank you for the call, Brother. I know it can't be cheap. I should let you go now."

" _The Bishop authorized the expense,_ " Stern said. " _He's glad to hear what you're up to as well. And … I truly felt a need to speak with you face-to-face. Some things, a Cortex message just isn't fit for._ "

Book nodded. "Agreed."

" _Come back to us, Brother,_ " Stern said. " _Come back to us whole and sound, with your spirit refreshed and your dedication restored. We'll be waiting for you._ " The connection blanked.

Book drew a heavy breath and let it out.

Behind him, James said, "That man don't like you much."

"Brother Stern and I have known each other for many years. We used to be very close," the old man said. "I'm sure both of us pray every night that our friendship be restored. But the way back to each other is a closed door."

"How'd he lose the eye? Step on a rake in the garden?" _Or is that the reason you can't be friends anymore?_ His eyes asked.

"No," Book said. "Something else." _It's not a missing eye that stands between us. It's a missing report. He knows I once lied to my superiors to shelter an individual from investigation. It's a breach of trust, and a breaking of our vow as soldiers of the Faith, that he can forgive only after confession. But the secret I preserved with my perfidy is one that has to outlive me – outlive all of us - or there's no point to having ever kept it at all._

-0-

After dark, the posse's camp wasn't much to look at without a fire: just a cluster of rough deadfall-built lean-tos just inside the treeline, each large enough for a pack and open bedroll. A man might have walked past it unaware, unless he knew it was there.

"Hallo the camp," Came Jayne's low voice from the darkness of the trees.

Simon, on watch, replied quietly, "Here."

The others stirred and crawled out of their shelters as the big merc ghosted into their midst. He said, "We're outta here at first light."

"To where?" Dell asked. "Did you find him?"

"Well, if it ain't him, there's no leads to him here." He shrugged out of his pack and removed his bedroll. "Started out askin about the best times to come in lookin for work, which led to talk about men who come and go regular. That got me half a dozen possibles, men who was gone at the right times." He looked up at Simon. "Hope you ain't lookin for any a that money back."

"So you used it for bribes."

The big merc scoffed. "Gambled it away. Nothin makes a shagua all happy-chatty like winnin a big pot." He shifted, getting comfortable, and looked up through the trees at the faint line of Jove's inner ring. "Gettin their descriptions took awhile, but it went quicker when I remembered the knife." He toed off his shoes and settled in, arms behind his head. "Nearly everybody out in the woods carries a blade. And I spose any knife looks plenty big to a ten-year-old girl, if it's an inch from her eye or prickin the underside of her chin. But there's two fellas come to camp for a week or a month who carry ten-inch Bowies. I found out tonight that one of em comes out here for quick cash to settle gambling debts. The other…" He closed his eyes. "Nobody knows much about him, but he's been comin to the camps for years. Last time, he started with the advance crew for this camp and left just a month ago. He took a path comes in from the northwest and leads up into high country. We'll be on that trail an hour after sunrise, and then we'll see."


	10. Never

The trail from the charcoaling camp up into the hills was narrow and winding, clinging to the flanks of slopes so steep that they could see over the tops of the full-grown trees just a dozen yards downslope. They trod it single file, making constant use of their walking sticks to brace themselves as the trail rose, dipped briefly, and rose still more. Jayne, at the head of the line, was thankful that the path was narrow and difficult: there were no worries that the hundan had left it. It didn't matter that the trail was a month old and there were no prints to follow, so long as there was only one way their quarry could go. The first fork or crosstrail they came upon, though, he might have to get clever…

Dell huffed, "Is the air getting thinner?"

"Nah," said Jayne. "Path's just getting steeper." He kept his breath even and tightly controlled while talking, though the endless climb was taxing him in a way that his workouts in the hold hadn't prepared him for. The Hensons, outdoorsmen though they were, were all struggling, leaning hard on their staffs; the first place they found to stretch out, he decided, he'd call a rest.

Simon said, "I'm pretty sure the atmospheric shield maintains a uniform pressure." Their Core-bred city boy looked surprisingly fresh, though his shirt under his pack straps was dark with sweat.

"Maybe we're up above it."

"That doesn't seem likely," the doc told him. "We're still breathing."

"We go much higher," Royce said, looking up through the trees, "we might bump our heads on it."

Around midday, they came upon a clearing – just a spot where the path widened, really, a flat area smaller than _Serenity's_ lounge – and Jayne called a halt. Everyone shrugged out of their packs and set them gratefully on the ground. Dell rolled an eye at his brother when Jayne sat on a fallen log and began to unfold his map. The big merc beckoned to Simon, and the doctor sat beside him. Jayne spread the big map across both their laps as the three prospectors drew closer.

"What's the longest she said he was gone?" Jayne asked Simon, his fingertip on the wooded spot on the twenty-year-old map where they knew the charcoal camp was now located.

"All night, but she didn't say whether he left at supper or breakfast. What are you thinking?"

The merc's finger drew a narrow ellipse with the camp at one end, pointed east. "Just tryin for a better idea how far from the charcoal operation he might feel safe leavin the girl. I don't wanna round a bend and walk into his camp." It had also occurred to him that, if this path was used only by the man they were hunting, it might be alarmed or booby-trapped close to where he was denned up. "Might be time to slow down and start payin attention to the trail, and how much noise we're makin." He touched a spot a hand's width east of the camp. "We're about here." Then he tapped a thread of blue lying roughly north to south another handwidth east of their position. "He won't wanna be far from water, and this is the only stream inside a day's hike of the charcoal camp. We reach it before we come across him, we'll head upstream."

"Why upstream?" Garrod asked.

"Cause that's the direction keeps leadin up, and takes him farther from other people."

"How soon?" Garrod loomed over the sitting merc. "Can we be there tonight?"

"Well," Jayne said, "I'm thinkin we should stay put here for the night and start at first light. That should put us at the stream around noon."

Dell said, "If we push on now, we'll be there by dark!"

"Mebbe." Jayne eyed the boy. "You wanna give this gan ni niang a chance to find us before we find him? Till we get a better idea how far away he is, we don't take no chances stumblin around in the dark over strange territory he prolly knows better than the feel of his yinjing in his hand."

Garrod's voice was soft and dangerous. "You thinkin at all about what he's like to do to her tonight? Cuz you want to be _cautious_?"

Jayne stayed off his feet; he folded his arms, deliberately keeping them from straying near his holster. "What he's gonna do to her tonight," he said carefully, "is prolly the same thing he did to her last night, and the night before. The same thing he's gonna do to her tomorrow, if we tip our hand and he gets away with her. And the day after, and the day after that, till he's tired of her or she's plain used up, and he cuts her throat and leaves her for the scavengers and goes lookin for a replacement. You thinkin about that?"

The brothers looked about to protest, but their father said, "I don't like it either, but the man's right. We might only get one chance to save that girl. I don't want to throw it away taking a chance I could avoid." He unrolled his bedding and placed his pack at the open end for a pillow, then went carefully downslope through the trees. To Simon's eyes, the man looked wearier than he had when they had stopped.

The brothers shared a look and left the clearing as well, presumably to relieve themselves. But Simon noted that they both headed down in the same general direction their father had gone. He got up and set up his sleeping spot; when he finished, Jayne was still sitting with the map. "What is it?"

The merc beckoned Simon over with a movement of his head. The map was now folded to show an area mostly off their route. At the bottom, southern edge, he touched a fingertip to the cursed black crater with its haunting shadows. His finger moved north to a spot Simon judged to be a day's travel distant from the old hideout. There, he saw an irregular circle bare of trees, and a cluster of rectangular shadows around a trio of dark crescents. Jayne said, "The charcoal operation was smaller, twenny-odd years ago. But he was part of it even then. I talked to a foreman on the kettle crew, the first man hired when it was put together. The hundan we're trackin has been hirin on casual, camp to camp, almost from the start." Jayne folded the map. "The outfit's a real company, pays taxes and all. The man who set it up even gave it a name, all legal and hifalutin. Wanna take a guess?"

Simon felt a chill. "Does it have 'Ames' in it?"

"Blue ribbon, Three Percent. 'Ames and Sons, Limited.'"

"I thought he only had one son."

"He does, accordin to the foreman. And the kid wasn't even born when Ames started the company. Ambitious jiba, innee?" Jayne took a pull from his metal canteen. "He sold the company bout a year ago, but the new owners still use the name. Guess he sold it to em, along with his contracts and suppliers and such." He offered the canteen to Simon.

"Goodwill, it's called," Simon said. "When my father buys a successful business, he always includes goodwill in the deal. He says it's worth more than the inventory." He put the canteen's opening to his lips and let a swallow into his mouth before he noticed the smell. He spluttered, eyes watering.

Jayne gave Simon a little smile. "Just somethin to cut the dust, and mebbe make the night a little quieter. How's the feet?"

"The feet are fine. Though it's a miracle I can still feel them." The raw alcohol made the memory of Kaylee's slash seem like ambrosia.

"One a the fellas in the kitchen has got a still," Jayne said, putting the canteen away. "Seemed smart not ta ask what he put in it." He fussed with the inside of the pack, seeming to have trouble fitting the contents together. Finally, he got a firm grip and hauled out a carefully wound bundle of rope.

"Wai." The Hensons stepped back into the little clearing. Garrod went on, "Where did you get that?"

"Brought it out of the charcoal camp," Jayne said. "Was thinkin of the doc and his tree-climbin stunt when I did it, but I'm guessin we may have other uses for it later."

-0-

In _Serenity's_ galley, Kaylee watched the water streaming out of the faucet. The recycler had been repaired, and she was clearing the brown gunk out of the taps, one at a time; the galley faucet, being the highest one aboard delivering drinking water, was the last. While she waited, her mind drifted, settling on her family - and her brothers in particular.

She and Rosh had talked at length, catching up, and Kaylee doing her best to satisfy his curiosity. It had been hard to avoid telling him the whole truth about River's condition and the reason she and Simon were aboard _Serenity_. She badly wanted his approval of her beau, but despite how close they were, she was unsure how Rosh would react to learning that the Tams were fugitives from the law with huge prices on their heads.

Matt's bitter opinion of the Alliance, as related to her by River, had taken Kaylee by surprise. He had never given a hint that he harbored such ill will toward the people whose flag waved above their little world, though it seemed clear now that he believed official indifference had played a hand in her and Mina's long imprisonment and Mina's loss of her mind. She thought that maybe finding Mina's body had freshened and strengthened his resentment.

But would he act on it? How? Matt wasn't the kind to join the hooligans and vandals using the Alliance as an excuse for their little pranks. If Matt Frye ever made a statement against the authorities, it would be meaningful, and probably risky.

But it was Will who worried her the most. The family still hadn't spoken to him about how he came to be, but at the wake the house had been flooded with well-meaning folk with Mina on their minds and tongues; it seemed likely he had learned something the other Fryes would prefer kept from him for a while yet. She debated on whether to sound him out, to see if what he'd heard had at least been true and not gossip. Maybe when Simon and the others returned…

The coffee-colored water streaming out of the tap thinned and then abruptly cleared. Kaylee gave a little breath of relief. They could use the shower now, at least, but she would have to run some tests before they quit drinking bottled water aboard. She was filling a little vial for a sample when a shadow passed over the sink. She looked up through the window and saw an aircar, unmarked, pass just overhead, headed toward the house.

She hurried down to the hold and stepped out on the ramp. By then the car had settled to the earth, its sole occupant waiting for the dust to dissipate before getting out. Kaylee recognized the young man: Mr. Ames's son, who had come with him the night of the party. He leaned against the grounded aircar and cupped his hands around his face; when he took them away, she saw that he had a cigarette in his mouth, a rare vice among folks beyond the Border.

Kaylee quickstepped toward him. "Mister Ames," she called, unsure of his first name. "Coming to inspect the work?"

"'Mister Ames' is my dad," he said, smiling faintly down at her: he was quite tall. "I'm Rod or Roddy, when my father's not introducing me to strangers. He thought it would draw less attention to send me here instead of coming himself. There are people who are always interested in what Ames Holdings is doing, and we have no recorded ties to Frye's Repair." He took a deep pull from his cig and blew out a little wisp of smoke. "No, I'm not here to look the ship over. What I'm here to check on is the progress of our hunting party."

"We haven't heard from them," she said. "Not since they found Mina." She swallowed and went on. "No reason to think anything's wrong. Wash thinks they might have left the com on by accident and flattened the battery."

He nodded. "I wanted to be here for the wake, to show my respects," he said. "But…"

"People would wonder what you're doing here. Thank you anyway."

He nodded again, and turned his gaze on the ship parked across the field. He took a big pull on the cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke; though his face was turned away, she could still smell it: the tobacco had an odd scent very different from Jayne's cigars. "Must have stirred up some memories."

"She hasn't been far from my mind since I come back," she said. "At least now we can stop wonderin."

"I wanted to go with them," he said, and she realized he was looking past the ship toward the distant green line of the Wood. "Father wouldn't let me."

"Well," she said uncertainly, "he wanted to keep the party small." _And maybe he wanted to spare you having to look at what they find._

"Who's got more right to be there than her own brother?"

She had no answer for that. Instead she said. "How old are you, you don't mind my asking?"

"Twenty-seven, next birthday." Another puff and exhale. Something about the smoke coming from his mouth made her nervous, as if Roderick Ames was a piece of malfunctioning machinery.

"And she's ten. That's a pretty big age gap."

"Yes," he said. "Almost exactly the gap between my father's first and second wives."

Kaylee felt her ears warm. "Oh."

"He didn't throw her over for a younger woman, Miss Frye," he said. "She left him. And me, when I was younger than Amadine."

"It's Kaylee."

He nodded. "You like it, out in space?"

"I like flyin," she said. "I like my ship and crew."

"But not space."

She shrugged. "The stars are pretty. Side from that, space is just what's between the places you wanna go. If I ever suit up, it usually means trouble, and nobody wants trouble in space."

"I like space," he said. "It's quiet. Simple. You always know what it wants from you. The stars are ten times as close through a faceplate as a window."

"That's all true," she allowed. "What were you doing in space?"

"A business venture of my father's. I can't say any more." He dropped the half-spent cigarette and ground it out under a toe. "Well. I'm keeping you from your work, and the less time I'm away the better. Will you call me if you hear from them?"

"First thing."

He pulled a small notebook from his pocket, jotted on it, and tore the page off. "My com code. Personal, not the office. Best to leave my father out of this, keep a low profile."

"These people, aren't they watchin you too? Officer of the company, and all?"

The faint smile returned. "I'm sure it will be easy to explain me visiting a pretty girl and talking to her on com. There will be a hundred guesses how we met, but no suspicion."

As she took the slip of paper, she said, "Sure you don't want to see how we're spendin your money?"

"My father's money," he corrected. "I'm certain you're spending it prudently. I only hope you can be finished by the time your friends come back." His attention turned back to the treeline. "You'll all be ready by then to get into space and be on your way someplace far from here, I'm sure."

-0-

Shepherd Book was hoeing in the tiny garden beside the Frye homestead, preparing a section for planting. He was also keeping an eye on Kaylee and the Ames boy standing beside his aircar in the field. The scuffing sound of shoes headed toward him from the house made him turn. When he saw the person heading across the bare earth toward him, he dropped his hoe and took a step toward her.

"Easy, Brother," said Sister Nan. "Just a handshake, we're not supposed to know each other."

They were far enough from the house and other buildings that they could speak privately, but the little garden patch was visible from numerous observation spots, even the ship. "I'd say not," he said as he clasped her hand. "You look like a farm hand."

As Sister Risa was beautiful, Sister Nan was … not. She wasn't ugly or misshapen, but her face was plain and coarse-featured, her figure stocky and mannish. Her hair, freed of its topknot, was short, dry, and gray. The only role Book could imagine for her that was distinctly female would be that of the matriarch of a big and sturdy family.

"Right in one," she said, still clasping his hand. She was clad in a checked flannel shirt and denim pants, her feet shod in heavy work boots. "A transient, looking for a few days' work. That's all the time I can spare from my real assignment, but the Bishop thought he should send someone whose opinion you'd trust."

"Hm." Book let go of her hand. "So you're here to tell me not to pursue it?"

She snorted. "You think His Excellency would send me on a fool's errand? I'm here to pick up your little investigation. Give me what you have, Derrial, and I'll look into it. But if it turns out to be nothing, or even just small change, you have to promise to leave it be. The Bishop insists."

"Agreed." They stood together under the blurry sun while Book spoke, stopping only to answer an occasional question. In a hand of minutes he was finished. "What do you think?"

The whine of motors intruded; the aircar lifted up a few meters, turned, and went off the way it had come. Kaylee waved briefly, then headed back to the ship.

"Well," Nan said, "it's about money, of course. At first wash, it sounds like a business venture that's illegal or simply depends on secrecy. If he really is a government official, I suspect this fellow is bending or ignoring a few rules to help things along, in return for a share. Not just a bribe, he's risking too much."

"But there's nothing in those woods but small operations – prospecting, hunting, a little logging. Nothing worth an Alliance bureaucrat's time."

"Derrial," she said, "there's something beyond price in those woods. You think this fellow Singh doesn't know about your 'hunting party,' and what it's hunting? If Ames is as rich as you say, maybe Singh is mounting his own rescue effort, looking for a reward." She interlaced her fingers and stared at her thumbs. "Or maybe, it wasn't the Woodsman who took that little girl at all." She raised her eyes. "Well. We can speculate all day. It's time to start digging up some facts." Grinning, she knelt in the soft earth. "Bless me, Father."

-0-

As predicted, the party reached the stream just before midday. The morning march had seemed dangerously silent to Simon, with the Hensons hardly exchanging a word with Jayne or him, though they had occasionally spoken to one another in voices too low to hear. The silence seemed to suit the big merc, however, and he had taken the lead, scanning the ground and the trees along the path carefully, mostly traveling as if he was all alone.

At the water – hardly more than a trickle, small enough to cross with a leap – Jayne examined the banks carefully.

"Anything?" Royce asked.

"Somethin, not much." He bent and touched a finger to a vague indentation, then pointed to another a step away. "Tracks, but they could be anything, really, even an animal. The stream rose up a while back and washed most of it out. Can't even tell how many, or which way they're headed."

Dell said, "You were sure they were headed upstream."

"I was sure that was where he'd be keepin her," Jayne said. "That don't mean he ain't moved her, if he's done with the charcoal camp." He moved downstream. "Stay here."

Dell stared after him, his face a mask of anger. As soon as the big merc disappeared around a bend, he turned and started upstream. Simon grabbed his wrist. The boy jerked his arm, but the doctor held fast. Simon sensed the other Hensons coming up behind him.

"I think you're going the right way," Simon said, addressing Dell but speaking to all three of them. "But those tracks may get clearer as we go. If we step all over them before Jayne sees them, we might lose important information. Wait for him. He won't be long." He let go of the boy, then bent with his canteen to fill it from the stream and drop a purifying pill in its opening.

Within half an hour Jayne was back, walking through the shallow stream and raising tiny splashes. He passed them, scanning both banks. The rest of the group followed. Simon asked, "What are you doing?"

"Lookin for where they crossed the stream," he said over his shoulder. "The tracks on the bank end right where we come out. But if they'd been on the trail we was on, I'd a seen signs. That means they went in the water, or come out of it. There's a little fall bout a quarter mile downstream where they'd a had to come out, but there's no sign. So that means-" He swerved to the far bank and parted some weedy brush. "Wait here." He stepped through and disappeared. Less than a minute later he was back. "This way. Fill your canteens first."

Scarcely five yards up the bank, the mud gave way to loam, and they saw the tracks: two sets of footprints, one half the size of the other, headed away from the creek. Simon drew a quick breath and let it out. It seemed now as if he had been mentally holding his breath since the little shack in the crater. These footprints were the first solid evidence that they hadn't been wandering through the Wood on a fool's errand, that they were on the kidnapper's trail and the child was still alive.

Royce said it for all of them. "You led us true, Cobb. We'd of never found them without you."

"Ain't found em yet." Jayne spread a palm over an untrod part of the narrow path, brushing at the dirt. Then he took a pinch of soil from the rim of one of the prints and rubbed it between his fingers. "This soil 'ud hold prints a long time. Wish I knew when it rained last." He followed the trail, slowly, for a dozen steps, then stopped and pointed at the ground. "Seen anything goes with those?"

A line of palm-sized pawprints crossed the trail; one of them overlay a shoeprint, blurring it. Simon looked a bit further down the trail and saw several more. "No."

"Squirrels, opossum, deer," Royce said. "The wildlife isn't shy, this far from civilization."

"But we ain't seen this little sneak. Which tells me he prolly goes about his business at night."

"So they're no less than half a day ahead of us," Simon said.

"And maybe as much as three," their tracker said. "Might be able to narrow that down when the ground changes. But for now, we better figure half a day."

"Half a day, that's nothing." Dell stepped forward.

Jayne held up a palm. "It's a lot more than nothin. We don't know how fast _he's_ travelin. We could spend days catchin up to him, days travelin close enough behind he might hear us. Sound travels farther in these trees than you think, and the kinda sounds men make on the march draws the ear. If he catches wind of a gang of men out here on his back trail, he'll run. And if that little girl is slowin him down, what do you think he'll do?" He eyed Del's pack, with the skillet hanging off the back. "Tie down anything that rattles, or wrap it in cloth. Watch where you step. And if you need ta talk to somebody, do it with your lips to his ear. We're hunters now."

While the others secured their gear, Jayne took a few more steps down the track, his eyes on the ground. "Huh," he said.

"What?" Royce shouldered his pack and joined the big merc; the others followed as they finished up.

Jayne stood looking down at the tracks. "Good news and strange news. I was a mite worried by that backtrack business at the stream – that's a stunt a hundan pulls when he knows somebody's on his trail. But now I think he just missed the path. When he got to the trail we used, he knew he'd overshot and doubled back, walkin the stream to make sure he didn't miss it a second time. This gan ni niang ain't in no hurry." He pointed at one large shoeprint, then the next. "I thought maybe he was shorter than they said, by the stride, but the heel marks tell me he's just amblin along. And lookit this." He pointed to a smaller shoeprint, overlaid by the larger one. "Now this." He stepped forward several paces and indicated another pair of prints: this time the smaller print was on top of the larger one. "Sometimes she's ahead of him, sometimes behind. No drag marks, though."

"He's had her for over three weeks," Royce said. "Bet she learned the first day not to pull on the rope."

"Maybe," Jayne said. "To me, it looks like he's letting her set the pace."

"Where's he taking her?"

"Dunno. There's nothin up this way but higher ground and more trees, accordin to the map."

"Someplace no one would think to look."

"For a reason. He still needs water. Less he plans his stay out here to be a short one."

-0-

Shepherd Book, shirtless in the warm sunshine, knelt over a wide board resting on two low sawhorses. He applied a handsaw to the protruding end, pulling the Western-style saw instead of pushing, trying to start his cut with a clean kerf. But the blade snagged and wandered a thumb's width off the mark. He sighed and tried again.

At least, he thought, he was engaged in rough carpentry and not cabinet work; no one would notice the mistake. The board was intended to repair a sliding door at the back of the barn: a minor job not critical or often looked at, which was probably why Papa Frye had consented to let Book do it. For the past three days, the old preacher had been volunteering for solitary outside work where he was unlikely to be observed, and carried his Cortex link hidden in a small bag around his waist. But Nan had sent no messages. And the time she had said she could spare for an investigation was nearly run out.

Meanwhile, Singh had been busy. Inara had called the ship two days before, outraged: her shuttle had been grounded in Capital City pending a review of its service logs. It had come to the Traffic Board's attention, she had been apologetically informed, that her shuttle's mothership had come to New Home seriously behind on its mandated maintenance; it was only natural to assume that its auxiliary craft were similarly at risk. It was a neat move, Book thought, one that turned their Companion's privileged status against her: Inara might have talked her way out of a restriction of her movements generated by any other rationale, but not one generated by a concern for her valuable hide.

The scrap end of the board fell off under the saw. Book lifted the cut board into place and tried to fit it in, and sighed again. It was perhaps a quarter of an inch too long. He doubted he could manage a second cut so close to the first without butchering it. _Some student of a carpenter I am._

"Don't know why you're surprised," said Sister Nan. She wore an outfit similar to the one from their last meeting. "You were always hopeless with any tool didn't have bullets come out one end."

"That's so untrue. I once used a pipe wrench to good effect on two men who were about to shoot you, you may recall." He replaced the board on the sawhorse, glanced around, and sat on it. The woman sat beside him, putting their heads close together. "Well?"

"Well, your 'Bartolemew Singh' doesn't exist, though I'm sure you knew that. And the case against you was officially closed at the same time your pilot's license was reinstated – that was sloppy of you, Derrial."

"I haven't flown in over twenty years."

"Even worse. Letting God-given talent atrophy is poor stewardship." The woman's tone was joking, but Book knew she meant every word, as Risa had when she had spoken of wasting her gift of beauty.

"Anyway." Nan withdrew a small capture from her pocket. "There's nothing linking this man and his meeting with you to any government office. But, the Alliance being the Alliance, it likes to keep tabs on its employees during working hours – not the executives, of course, but you mentioned a staffer who escorted you to your very unofficial meet. It being a tad early for the lunch rush, there weren't more than a hand of young women matching your description off duty at the time. We checked them out-"

"We?"

"Did you really think I came alone, with just three days to give you enough answers to quiet your itch? But you don't need to know who they are. Anyway, one of these young women was a personal assistant to…" She activated the capture, showing Book a few seconds' observation of Singh as he got into an aircar. "Your man?"

"Yes."

"Meet the Honorable Lu Jian, Minister for Economic Development, Yellow Sun Sector – a job that consists mainly of finding profit opportunities out here for Core World businesses – and individuals, if they're generous enough. And sometimes, if a venture is lucrative enough and doesn't require a Core World outfit's cash reserves, he'll offer it to a small-timer, a local, and cut himself in for a share. Zang shang liu," she added, using the common term for people of wealth who were undeserving of it. "He's been here a long time, and he's quite wealthy, and his salary is the smallest part of his income."

Malcolm Reynolds appeared from behind the machine shed on the far side of the field, toolbox in one hand, coil of wire in the other, headed toward _Serenity_ ; apparently the ship's captain had taken Book's place as gopher for the repair crew. He glanced their way and slowed. Book raised his hand over his head and gave a little wave, and Mal lifted his in return before moving on.

Nan said to Book, "Nothing to see here, eh, Brother? How much do they know?"

"That depends on which of them you're talking about. They've all noted that I don't fit the mold of a monk turned country preacher. Some of them speculate, but they don't bother me about it. Surprisingly, the only one with the full story from my own mouth is a career criminal – small-time – who got hired on under rather strange circumstances. I'm sure he'll keep it close, not least because of the stories he's heard about us."

Nan gave him a little smile. "Are they true?"

"I don't know. He's never repeated them to me. But I doubt he's ever known anyone worthy of the Confessor's interest."

"And where is he now?"

"Out in the Wood, looking for that girl."

Sister Nan turned serious again. "There's more to hear about Minister Lu."

"I was hoping."

"Twenty-odd years ago, he brokered a deal to sell the terraforming project's antiquated geosat system and ancillary equipment to a local businessman. You know the name."

Book nodded. "Can't say I'm surprised. Any other connection?"

"A tenuous one. Ames is involved in a new venture, something very big which would certainly require Lu's involvement. It seems that Ames Enterprises has been working for several years to acquire a near-space mining license."

"Mining what?"

"Only Ames knows, but something very profitable. Judging by the equipment inquiries, I'd say 'carbons."

Book let out a soft grunt. 'Carbons were possibly the rarest resource in the 'Verse. There were only two known sources: the interiors of certain gas giants, extraction from which was fatally risky and incredibly expensive; or from asteroidal bodies, rare as hen's teeth, that wandered into inhabited space on the return leg of a billion-year orbit, created when a living planet circling Blue Sun had shattered eons before. Only three such had ever been discovered, and had made their owners wealthy beyond dreams.

If the stories were true, the surface of Earth-that-Was had been floating on the stuff, squirting out of the ground wherever you drilled a deep enough hole. Just like here, it had been prized for all the products that could be made from it, from lubricants to pesticides to fertilizer to plastics. But, incredibly, its primary use to folks on the homeworld had been as fuel; they had _burned_ oceans of it to drive their engines, and the smoke and other byproducts of that combustion had been a chief contributor to fouling the planet's air and changing its climate, forcing humanity to find lodgings elsewhere. Book gave a word of thanks to the Creator for preventing Man repeating that mistake here.

"However," Nan went on, "Ames has a bit of a cash-flow problem. Space mining isn't cheap or simple, and coming up with the money for licenses, permits, fees-"

"Bribes."

"-to acquire exclusive rights for an operation lucrative enough to interest Core World firms has left him stretched thin. He was forced to approach a few investors – including Lu, we believe – in return for shares. But it still wasn't enough; buying his way through the bureaucracy and beating off the competition has emptied his treasure chest, leaving him without enough capital for equipment and skilled labor to get started. He's been selling off his businesses over the past few years; all he has left are the satellites and his contract mining outfits. But he's still short, and he has nothing left to sell and nowhere to go for more cash. His partners have begun talking about selling out to some Core World firm to save their investment. But Ames is a stubborn man. He's been building his little empire in Jove system for thirty years – since before his first marriage, in fact – and he's not eager to turn it over to some Core World accountant, no matter how much he and his friends profit from it." Nan looked off across the field, and her voice lowered. "And … he still has one very sizeable potential asset."

A feeling of dread came over the old preacher. During his career, he had dealt with some of the vilest practices and people imaginable; he knew that bad men were capable of anything, and even normally upright people could be driven or drift to surprisingly evil acts…

"Ames has an insurance policy, a big one, taken out when he first started soliciting partners," she said. "It may not have been his idea, maybe something his partners insisted on."

"How much?"

"On himself, his wife, and his two children, four million credits total. It's a family policy. The premiums are equal for each member. But the payouts are unequal, depending on the assessment of risk, and they shift over time as the members age." She head-shrugged. "Which sounds more than a little peculiar, but insurance is really just a form of gambling, and you can find somebody willing to take any bet for the right odds. The takeaway to this is, you can buy a much higher payout on a family policy if you include the kids, because you can buy a lot more insurance on a ten-year-old girl for the same money than you can on a fifty-year-old man."

"How much?" He asked again.

"On the daughter, one point six million. Enough to buy a fleet of ships, or a first-rate mining outfit for harvesting asteroids." She stroked her forehead, suddenly looking very weary. "But the insurance company could keep Ames waiting for years for his money without proof of death. If he's going to collect in time to save his business, he needs a body."

-0-

Three days after crossing the stream, the posse caught up with the Woodsman and his captive. This had been accomplished by forced marches – rising before dawn and setting off as soon as they could see the tracks of their quarry, walking until the light entirely disappeared, then dropping in place to gnaw a little hardtack before falling asleep. They had also been helped along by the seeming unhurried pace of their target.

"Maybe the kid's sick, or just wore out," Dell had murmured to Simon on the trail. "He wouldn't kill her for that, if he still felt safe, and he couldn't lay his hands on another victim easy. He'd let her rest up some, so he could get more use out of her."

Simon had shrugged. Whatever reasoning the Woodsman used, or anyone like him, was beyond his understanding. The girl was alive, and Jayne had said the tracks were getting fresher; that was enough to know.

They had twice come upon the remains of recent overnight camps in wide spots along the trail: the first on the evening of the first day; the second near noon of the next. The camps had consisted of just a small fire, its embers carefully smothered with dirt. The Hensons' jaw muscles and nostrils had flexed at the single flattened spot beside the fire.

On the morning of the third day, they had been ascending a gentle grade through trees that abruptly thinned and thickened again, the result of God knew what geological or historical change. Dell had moved up close behind Simon, about to whisper something, when Simon caught a whiff of smoke and stopped, the boy behind nearly running into him before the scent registered. At the head of the line, Jayne signaled a halt.

They put their heads together as best they could on the steep narrow trail, propping themselves with their sticks. Jayne said quietly, "Stay here. I'll scout ahead."

"Don't take him on by yourself," Royce said.

"Never been in a fair fight I could make unfair. I'll be back for ya." He shrugged out of his big double pack, taking his rifle with him, and moved up the trail. They watched him until a gentle curve took him out of sight.

The posse waited, silent and tense, exchanging dark looks. Garrod took out his rifle and quietly inspected the rounds in his magazine. An hour later, Jayne returned. "Didn't get close enough to see em clear, but I see their fire, bout half a mile ahead. I don't wanna give him a chance to bolt. So we need to leave the path before it bends and come at the camp from outta the trees and surround him. The trees thin out some away from the path, so we got a good chance if we do it right." His eyes took them all in. "But we gotta be _quiet_ , like smoke. He didn't stay uncaught this long without bein crafty and cautious. All it might take is a snappin twig or a little shower of dew fallin off a branch ten yards in to set him off. Take it dead slow, he ain't goin nowhere. Watch where you put your foot, every step. No unnecessary arm movements, they draw the eye. Don't touch anything."

The Hensons' eyes flicked Simon's way, their question clear. Jayne caught it too. He said, "Dell, Garrod, take either side, get a little ahead of him. Royce, you come up behind on the right. Get as close as you can without givin yourselves away, and wait for my signal." His eyes swept the little group. "Anybody don't feel woodcrafty enough, stay back here and keep him from runnin back down the trail." At their nods of assent, he turned to Simon. "Stay with me."

When the others had gone, Simon said, "I'm not going to change my mind. I can do this." The others' packs sat propped against one another, but he still wore his; he couldn't easily carry his medical supplies without it. He pulled his pistol from an outside pocket, checked the clip, and put it back.

"Aright." Jayne beckoned the doctor up the trail. They walked in silence until the path began its gentle bend, then the big merc found a narrow opening in the brush and stepped through, without so much as a swaying branch. Simon took a quick breath and followed.

The trees and brush thinned out a dozen meters from the path, and the ground turned soft and spongy. Simon could just make out the path they had left through the tree trunks: he felt sure that someone on the trail would have a very difficult time seeing through the foliage lining it into the woods beyond. Dell, supposed to be somewhere ahead of them on this side, was nowhere in sight, lost among the trees.

Rather than follow Jayne's, he picked his own path, though he did not stray more than a few meters from the big merc. Moving very deliberately and examining the ground before setting his foot down, looking all around and ahead between steps for the clearest way, they took nearly ten minutes to travel a hundred meters. Jayne glanced back at him from time to time, nodding. The same sort of stealth had allowed Simon Tam to navigate Blackout Zone alleys strewn with trash and sleeping derelicts without losing his footing or raising an alarm.

Simon saw a flicker between the trees in the direction of the path ahead; it appeared and vanished as his moved, the trees hiding and revealing it. He remembered to breathe and reached slowly behind him for his pistol. The weapon was very heavy in his hand, and made him feel clumsy and unbalanced, but he couldn't put it back.

Just ahead, Jayne was moving in a deer stalker's crouch, eyes fixed on the light. Simon followed, matching his pace and posture, until the big merc stopped about ten meters from the path. He stared at the treeline, and between the trees saw movement that didn't come from the fire.

In a wide clearing, a man sat cross-legged on the ground facing the fire, doing something with an object in his lap. A pack rested against a tree nearby. He was dressed as they all were, in sturdy working clothes. Simon couldn't see his face clearly, but his hair hung down to his shoulders and looked rather ill-cared-for. And, although his position and the intervening trees made it difficult to be sure, he looked big.

A different figure moved into view, and Simon stopped breathing again: the girl's hair was cut roughly short and none too clean, but the color was Amadine's. And her clothing, looking soiled and rather worse for wear, matched the capture Ames had given them of his daughter the day of her disappearance. She was unfettered, stooping by the side of the trail on the opposite side three or four meters behind her seated captor. It seemed strange that the man should allow her so much freedom, but really, where could she go? It was as Royce had said: in the near month she had been in his power, the monster had trained her not to flee or resist.

Slowly, an inch at a time, Jayne set his rifle on the ground and silently pulled the pistol from his belt holster, eyes never leaving the man by the fire. Simon wondered what the big merc was going to do next, what he was waiting for. Was he making sure the others were in place and ready? Did he intend to move closer?

The man's head jerked up, and he stared into the trees just ahead of them. He looked at his pack.

" _Gittem_!" Jayne shouted, and pelted through the trees, and Simon ran after, hearing crashing noises elsewhere nearby.

The man shot to his feet. "RUN!" He roared. The girl stood, dropped something, swung her head around wildly at the men bursting from the trees, and ran – straight to the man, and clutched his shirt. He swept her behind him with one big hand and held her there while he backed up against a tree. He glared at the men leveling their weapons at him, but his voice was quiet and not for them. "Idjit kid, why didn't you run?"

A tiny sob was his only answer.

Simon glanced at the trail where the girl had been: a patch of wildflowers lined the path there, yellow and purple and red, and a small bundle of them lay in the dust where she had dropped them. He looked back at the big man shielding the child with his body, and saw a tiny yellow flower tucked behind one ear.

Jayne said, "What the hell is this?"


	11. Chapter 11

Jayne toed the knife and whetstone lying in the dirt beside the fire, where the man had apparently been sharpening his tool. It was a ten-inch Bowie, long enough to run a man clean through. "You got a gun, you better pass it over, real slow."

The man eyed the five intruders pointing an assortment of pistols and rifles in his face. "It's in my pack."

The pack he had been looking towards, when some animal instinct had warned him of danger. "Smart of ya ta drop the blade."

"Guess we'll see about that." The man's voice was deep and growling, very like Jayne's.

"Down on your knees, fingers laced on your head."

Unseen behind him, the girl keened. "Quiet," the man said gently. He did as he was told, dropping his knees to the dirt, and the girl behind him was revealed. She let go of the back of the man's shirt and grasped the tree behind her, staring fearfully at the men all around.

"Easy, girl," Jayne said. "You Amadine Ames?"

"She doesn't talk," the man on his knees said. "Screams some, but she never says a word."

"Bastard!" Garrod stepped forward, rifle reversed, and drove the butt into the man's neck, knocking him over. "What did you do to her!"

"She was like that when I found her!" The man drew his legs up and covered his head.

The prospector raised his rifle again, but Jayne grabbed his arm. "Where?" He asked the man on the ground.

"There's a creek off to the west, couple day's travel. She come tearin through the woods like the Devil was after her, right into my camp. I don't think she even realized. Nearly fell into the fire."

"Sit up. Hands back on your head."

Simon shrugged out of his pack and set it at his feet. From under the top flap, he pulled a length of rope cut from the coil Jayne had taken from the camp and handed it to Dell. The boy glanced from Jayne to his father, and both men nodded: the sooner this man was secured, the less likely he was to be shot by het-up men with guns in his face. He rested his rifle against a nearby tree and bound the man's hands behind him. When the boy stepped back and their captive was settled again, Jayne holstered his weapon and said, "Where were you takin her?"

"There's a mining camp, a few miles on the other side of this ridge. Probably got a wave set, maybe a doctor."

"There's a logger's camp just a day's walk southwest of where you were at," Jayne said. "Why didn't you go there?" _We know you worked there, jiba. Tell us you didn't know it was there, and we'll shoot you where you sit._

The man said, "Because that's the direction she was running _from_. I've worked those camps, and some of the men there are rough ga ni niangs. I never seen any little kids there, or anything really shady. But I keep mostly to myself. Could be a lot goin on there I don't know about. I wasn't about to risk giving her back to whoever had her before."

"Every hundan ever got caught with something didn't belong to him claimed he found it," Garrod said; unlike his father, Simon, and Jayne, he hadn't put away his gun. "Look at him. He matches Kaylee's description perfect."

"Wasn't much of a description," Jayne rejoined. "Half the drifters out here in the Wood probly match it."

The prospector turned hot eyes to Jayne. "You takin his side in this?"

"This ain't about sides," Jayne said. "I'm just talkin, that's all."

Dell said to the man, "You got any proof?" He reached for the man's pack.

"What kind of proof could I give you? A note from the real kidnapper?" He looked up at Garrod. "Ain't enough proof in the world to convince a man whose mind is made up hard enough."

Garrod said, voice low, "How'd you know she was kidnapped, you been out in the woods all this time?"

"Because you just _told_ me. And what are you all out here for, if you're not looking for her? And the way she was runnin? She got away from somebody who was keeping her against her will. It's the only way it adds up."

During this exchange, Simon had pulled his medical kit from his pack. He approached the girl with his stethoscope, but she shrank away, slapping at him before he was close enough to reach. The doctor stilled at the terror in her eyes.

Royce said, "Who are you, and what are you doing out here then?"

"My name's Eddin Burdon, and I'm a rutting hermit," the man said. "I've lived out in the Wood for half my life. I got camps scattered about, and I go from one to another. When I feel a need for produce or a new pair of boots, I find work at a camp, mining or logging. When I can't stand the sight of people any more, I quit and go back into the hills."

Jayne gave the man a good looking-over. He was about Jayne's size, possibly a bit beefier. Unremarkable clothing, not different from their own. Hair uncombed but not particularly dirty. Clean-shaven – how did he manage _that_ so far from fresh water? Jayne's beard was just coming back from stubble to softness, him having made full use of the hot water at the logger's camp; Simon and Dell's faces were dark from the down that grew on them naturally when they were unacquainted with a razor. But Royce and Garrod's beards were full and thick, though their faces had been clean when they'd started their little expedition, testament to the difficulty of keeping properly groomed out in the wild. This man's 'camps' were likely more homelike than a branch-and-blanket lean-to, he thought.

"These 'camps,'" Garrod said, his voice dangerously quiet. "One of em a shack at the bottom of a crater?"

"I heard about that place, and what happened there," Burdon said. "But I never been there. I told you, I keep clear of places where there's people, unless I can find work there." He added, "Hell, that kinda hiu is one reason to stay away from other human beings."

Dell had been rummaging through Burdon's pack, laying items on the unrolled sleeping blanket: an old revolver not unlike Mal's; clothing, a towel and washcloth; eating and cooking supplies, including a big canteen and a number of steel canisters with screw-on lids. Various small tools and toiletries, and a few cheaply-bound books. No captures, nothing to write with. Not looking at anyone, Dell observed, "Just the one bedroll."

Burdon scowled; his voice rose. "She didn't bring her own, and I'm not in the habit of carrying spares in case a friend drops in. Been pretty cold of nights. What was I s'posed to do, sleep in the dirt? Or let her? Gor, _look_ at her. What kinda man could do what you're thinkin?"

"The kind we've been looking for," said Royce. "And I'm far from convinced we ain't found him." To Simon he said, "You're a doctor. Can't you examine her, find out what he's done to her?"

"I packed my bag for first aid, not forensics," Simon said. "An examination would tell me if she's been abused, but not by whom, or how long ago with any accuracy. Besides..." He looked deliberately at the girl, still pressed against the tree, her panicked stare swinging from one of them to the other. "How do you suggest we get her to submit to an examination? Sedate her? Or tie her up?"

Jayne thought of the day Simon had given River her second dose of Badger's meds, the one that had turned her into a trapped animal. It had taken three grown men to get the screaming, thrashing girl on the exam table and strap her down. He imagined this little girl, who'd already gone through Gor knew what, held down by four men gripping her wrists and ankles while a fifth one approached her with a syringe… He unclenched his jaw. "Not gonna happen, less you really need to look her over."

"She seems healthy and uninjured, and she's been eating," Simon said, putting away his stethoscope. "Anything I can do for her here can wait until she's at a real medical facility."

Jayne shook his head. Who'd have thought there'd be any doubts they had the right man? He wished mightily for a capture of the hundan they'd come after. River might have come up with a sketch from Kaylee's description, if he'd only thought of it…

 _No._ He shook his head again. The gan ni niang who'd stolen ten-year-old Kaylee and her teenage sister had kept them in Hell for two months. He'd forced the little girl to submit to all manner of degrading acts and threatened her life every day; the sister he'd raped and brutalized, beat near to death and stole her mind. Whatever image of him filled the little mechanic's imagination wouldn't likely make a useful sketch.

"What's wrong with her?" Royce asked quietly. "Why don't she talk?"

"Well, to be as objective as possible about it, she may be mute. Did Mr. Ames tell us anything to contradict that?"

Jayne said, "Seems like something he'd think to mention, if she was dumb or moonbrained."

"Agreed." Simon glanced at the girl, still frozen behind the bound and sitting man. "I don't want to discuss this in front of her. Or him."

"We got some other stuff to talk over too." Jayne drew his pistol again. "Dell, tie his wrists behind a tree. Make sure the knots are good and tight and hard to reach. Then you and Garrod, go back down the trail and fetch the packs. We're gonna be here a spell."

Garrod said, "We're not going back?"

"That minin camp is a better place to head, if it's where he says."

"If."

"Well, he was headed somewhere, and there's nothin on the map. Top of the ridge ain't that much farther on. If he's tellin the truth, we'll see it."

"Just cause the camp's there don't mean he was telling the truth." But he gathered his brother by eye and headed down the trail.

"All right," Royce said as they disappeared around the bend. "Now you've got the boys out of here, what do you want to say?"

Jayne glanced around the campsite. It was larger than most clearings on the trail, and irregular in shape: at one end was a small area screened from the rest by a low bump in the ground and a bitty stand of trees. He moved that way, and the others followed.

"I have some possibilities to offer about her condition, and the man she's with," Simon said. "But they're purely speculative. I didn't want to add fuel to the fire." He turned to Jayne. "When you warned me we might not be coming back with this man if we found him, I thought you meant you didn't think you could take him alive, not that I'd be a witness to a lynching."

"That's just what I meant. I figured once we found him, he'd fight or run." He glanced in the direction of their unseen captive. "If he's lyin, why's she stickin so close to him?"

"If he's telling the truth, why's she sticking so close to him?" Royce nodded in the same direction. "You see how she is with us. How did he win her trust?" He turned back to Simon.

"Well, just to start, let's assume he's telling the truth." At Royce's nod, he went on, "If he decided to find her help right away, he's had her no more than a week. I don't think we need to dwell on what may have happened to her in the weeks prior, but it was sure to bind her tightly to someone who offered her comfort and rescue. His misanthropy would be sure to transfer to her in the week they were alone together. And we didn't exactly make a sterling first impression, attacking the man who helped her – it would just reinforce what he's probably been telling her."

"That's pretty good," Royce said. "Bet if you was his lawyer, you could prolly get him off." His tone of voice made clear he wasn't offering a compliment.

"It's only one explanation," the doctor said. "There are others that aren't favorable to him at all." Simon glanced at the trail, though the bend where Burdon sat was out of sight from where they stood. "At Medacad, I took some psych courses. They were required, even though they seemed rather far from my chosen specialty. But one of those courses addressed abnormal and abusive dependent relationships, and I learned things that run counter to everything you might assume. Children sometimes bond tightly to abusive parents, convinced that the abuse is their own fault and determined to be 'good' kids so their parents will love them enough to stop. Hostages and kidnap victims who interact with their captors will sometimes come to identify and sympathize with them, even to the point of resisting their rescuers. It's common enough that it even has a name: 'Stockholm Syndrome,' though I have no idea where it came from – possibly from the name of the first person to identify it."

 _And the Reavers didn't have any trouble converting that fellow we picked up to their particular insanity,_ Jayne thought _._ But he didn't say that aloud; New Home was a quiet world far from the wild parts of the 'Verse, and had never suffered a raid or seen the death worshippers' handiwork. Jayne knew that most such folk were convinced that Reavers were just scary stories, and wouldn't have their minds changed till they'd seen them up close and personal. For sure, _he_ hadn't.

"He's only had her a month. Do you think-" Royce stopped and shook his head. "'Only a month.' Listen to me."

"If this man is who we suspect," Simon said, "he only needed two months to break Willamina Frye so thoroughly that she was still completely under his influence a year after she last saw him." He glanced again in the direction of Amadine and the bound man, hidden behind the trees. "And I think Kaylee will be looking over her shoulder for him for the rest of her life." Simon's fiancée had been about Amadine's age when she had been taken; would this child bear her captor's mark forever as well?

He went on, "Prolonged isolation is ideal for this sort of behavioral modification. Kaylee and Mina had each other, and their kidnapper was gone much of the time. But Amy may have spent the last month entirely alone with the man who took her, as his prisoner _and_ his dependent." Simon unzipped his bag, glanced unseeing at its contents, and zipped it shut again. "There's a certain technique to it. The abuse doesn't have to be physical. He threatens to kill them, then grants a reprieve. He makes them afraid, then offers them comfort. He gives them hope and takes it away. It's all done to attune their emotional and mental state to his, until they can't think or feel for themselves, until they're emotionally as well as physically dependent on him."

Royce's face stiffened. "Then what the hell are we doing leaving them alone?" He stepped between them, headed back to the main clearing with Jayne and Simon right behind. They rounded the little wooded spur, and the elder Henson said, "Zao _gao_."

Burdon sat against the tree with his arms stretched back behind it, his body wider than the trunk he was bound to, looking at them. The girl was gone. The look on Burdon's face told Jayne he wouldn't be forthcoming about her whereabouts. Feeling a dark suspicion, he trotted toward the captive man, and watched Burdon stiffen. The back of the tree came into view. The girl was working at the knots. She saw him and doubled her efforts, clawing at the rope.

Jayne barely stopped himself from backhanding her out of the way. Instead he gave her a shove that sent her sprawling. Burdon jerked forward, but the ropes held. The girl scuttled away, to be caught by Royce and Simon. The look on her face was piteous.

He couldn't stop himself. "What the _hell_ is wrong with you?!" He shouted, and instantly regretted it as the child cringed, looking ready to piss herself. He took a deep breath and redid the ropes, pulling the knots so tight it would likely take a knife to free the man. Quietly he said, "Just don't come near him again." To Simon he said, "Stay close to her."

"I'll watch her," Royce offered. Her wrist was still in his fist, and she looked like her legs were about to buckle.

"How much practice you got dealin with kids?" He nodded toward the doctor. "This fella had a little girl name her hamster after him once. And he's a doc, they know how to talk to people."

"I really don't," Simon said quietly, "But I'll stay with her." He put a hand between her trembling shoulders and guided her to the other side of the clearing, as far from the bound man as possible while keeping them all in sight.

Dell and Garrod rounded the trail, loaded down with five packs: their own, their father's, and Jayne's double burden. They had the look of men who had done some talking and had something on their minds. They eyeballed Burdon as they dropped their packs. Dell said to Simon, standing over the girl, "She comin around any?"

"I'd say not."

Garrod nodded toward the bound man. "Time we decided how we're gonna deal with him."

"Not now," said Simon, with a glance at Amadine, huddled against a tree and watching them with prey animal's eyes.

"What, you think a ten-year-old's too young to understand justice?" The elder brother's voice rose. "After what he's done to her, you don't think she wants to see the one who did it dead?"

"That's _enough_ ," said their father. "We're gonna talk this out. But that's the last I want to hear about killin in front of the child."

"If the mining camp is where he says," said Simon, "it not only supports his story, it means we can turn him-"

Royce held up a hand. "If it's there, and I'll bet it is, it's not proof of anything. Even if he was headed there, he might have meant to leave her nearby while he went to gather news."

"And it's a capital case," Garrod said, "that means he won't be tried local. Do you really think giving him to the Alliance courts is the right thing to do?" Garrod locked eyes with the doctor. "You trust the Alliance to do the right thing?"

"I don't," Dell said. "The Core's got no death penalty. They don't care how many folk die of sickness or hunger out on the Rim, but they won't end a man who's been …" His voice trailed off at a warning look from his father and his nod toward the seated girl. "They won't give it no more interest than a shoplifting case – it's a crime happened out in the sticks, right? Even the prosecutor won't really care what happens to him. The judge'll go for the quick and easy, a long sentence to gull the prairie dogs, but with a generous parole provision for the defense lawyer. They'll put that umhuo in a hotel room with soft lights and three squares while they send him to classes, teachin him the errors of his ways."

The boy swept an arm toward the bound man, glaring at Jayne. "You said it yourself. He can make anybody think he's harmless. He'll learn the right things to say, and the right things to do, and he'll convince them he's _rehabilitated._ And those shaguas are so sure they can fix _anything_ , they'll buy it and turn him loose, and the first chance he gets he'll drop off the grid. And pretty soon, some other man's kid will go missin."

Jayne spoke quietly. "Everything we know about the man tied to that tree don't add up to proof. We don't-"

"Proof?" Garrod's nostrils flared. "We had all the proof we needed, first time we looked him in the eyes." Dell nodded vigorously; Royce's eyelids drooped, a more reserved assent.

Jayne said, "I told ya, you can't tell if a man's a killer just by lookin in his ruttin eyes. He-"

" _No_." Garrod almost shouted. " _Look_. At his rutting _eyes_."

Jayne looked. Burdon looked pretty collected, he thought, for a man tied to a tree listening to people argue over whether he should live or die. There was nothing strange about his eyes, of course. A small scar bisected the brow above the left one, but there was no tale of the Woodsman to match that up against. He…

…

Burdon's eyes were green. Not the bright green of the ones Will Frye looked out on the world with, but another forty years lived mostly out of doors would likely fade them to the hue of their prisoner's. "What color were Willamina's eyes?" The girl had been a redhead, maybe she…

"Blue," Garrod said. "Cornflower blue. Beautiful, when they weren't staring at nothing, or darting all over." He went on, "This man is the one who did all those girls. Since we found Mina, I been wondering how many of the others were pregnant. Maybe that was how he decided when to put each of them under a rockpile and go looking for fresh. And maybe she knew that, in what was left of her mind, and it's why she was always afraid of her own child instead of loving him." He looked at Burdon with eyes that held no doubt or pity. "He put a knife in my brother and kicked him over a cliff. I'm not turnin him over to anybody."

"We're all still hot from the chase," Jayne said. "Things might look different after a night's sleep."

"No, they won't."

"Mebbe not. But after so long, what's another night? And if he really is the one, he'll have at least one sleepless night over what he done."

"Or a night to get away."

"Won't happen. We'll watch him. Take turns. You first." Jayne looked at Dell. "And you next. Keep a close eye." He intended that he and Simon would take their shifts in the hours from sunset till dawn; he had no intention of leaving the brothers alone with their captive while everyone else was asleep. "And we watch the girl too."

They moved Burdon to a tree in the little side clearing, tying him even more securely than before; Jayne thought that it would be a good thing not to be looking at him all the time. Royce watched him. The girl they kept with them as they made camp. The brothers, after a few unsuccessful attempts to get Amadine to talk, left her to Simon.

"Are you hungry?" He asked her. "The big man has gone hunting, but I can come up with something if you want something now." When she failed to respond, he asked, "Are you thirsty?" Still nothing. He tried again. "Do you need to go to the bathroom?" The nearest 'bathroom' was likely a privy in the miners' camp, but he couldn't think of another term.

She met his eyes finally, and stood, gazing into the woods. Simon's moment of faint elation faded. "I'm coming with you. Please don't run. We'd be sure to catch you, and chasing you down would only add to the tension around here." He turned and called to the brothers tending the fire, "Nature call. We'll be back."

They moved off through the trees until the clearing was nearly out of sight. Simon said, "Far enough." He locked eyes with the silent girl. "Against my better judgment, I'm going to turn my back. I'll count back from ten, slowly. If you need more time, you'll have to tell me before I reach zero." Surely she could manage a one-word signal, or at least a grunt.

He turned. "Ten." Simon counted back, taking a few breaths between each number, feeling his heart sink with every one he told off. "Zero," he said finally. He turned. She was gone.

But the branch she had brushed aside was still swaying, and he could see her running through the trees. He gave chase, cursing his ill-fitting shoes, and caught up with her after a few minutes. He snatched her off her feet, still running. She turned in his arms and kicked and pushed at him and thrashed, butting her head into his face in her frenzy, until he pinned her arms. "I'm sorry," he said over and over. "I don't want to hurt you, please just stop." Eventually she stilled, both of them panting. The girl shuddered in his arms, and Simon felt a drop of moisture on his neck.

He dropped to his knees, still holding her. "I know you're afraid. But we're only here to help." He loosened his grip a tiny amount, still pressing them together. "We've been searching for you almost since you disappeared. We heard you were taken by a bad man, a man who steals children and hurts them. I know a girl who was taken by him, before you were even born. He frightened her and told her things that weren't true, until she didn't know what was true anymore, and she was frightened all the time…"

Amy stared silently at him. Then, slowly, her hand squirmed up between them, came free, and brushed at his cheek.

Simon took a deep breath, released her, and took her hand. He turned back towards the clearing. "Let's go back, before the others get worried."

Supper was a simple affair: four fresh-killed rabbits and various staples from their and Burdon's supplies. The girl refused to eat until Burdon did. With Garrod aiming a pistol at the prisoner's forehead, Jayne bound his legs at ankle and knee, then cut the rope holding his arms behind the tree with the man's own knife, whose sheath Jayne now kept clipped to his left hip. The elder brother's weapon never wavered as the big man ate his portion and handed his tools back. After Jayne rebound his wrists behind the tree, he reached for the knee bindings.

"Leave em," Garrod said, gun still out and pointed.

"You leave em on, he won't be able ta feel his legs twenny minutes from now."

"Won't run then, will he?"

The big merc gave him a dark look, then used Burdon's knife to sever the knee bindings. But he left the lashings on his ankles. The prisoner grunted and drew up his legs to sit Indian style against the tree.

Jayne beckoned the older Henson brother out of earshot of the bound man. "When I was huntin, I took a look on the other side of the ridge. There's another ridge less'n ten miles on, wooded like this one. I didn't hear nothin, but there's a place on the opposite slope that's hard to make out, like the air's all blurry. I'm thinkin it's dust."

"Ayuh." Garrod bent closer, though there was no one near. "That girl should get returned to her family as quick as possible, don't you think? If the rest of us aren't ready at first light, I think you and Simon should head off that way with her. We'll meet up at the mining camp."

"With the fella tied to the tree?"

"Sure." The man's eyes were flat. "You don't want to take him with you. He'd just slow you down."

-0-

"I don't like it." Jayne carefully guided the edge of the big knife along the whetstone in slow, even strokes. "It's all too thin. I been tried on better evidence than this. And acquitted."

Anger pushed the words out of Simon's mouth unthinking. "Did you deserve to be?"

The big merc didn't look up, but the knife paused on the stone. "I was tried for the rape an murder of a sixteen-year-old girl. You wanna ask that question again?"

"No." He swallowed. "I'm sorry."

"You sure?" The sharpening process continued. "She was a town girl. They found her up in the hills, a place she had no business bein, not fifty yards from my camp. Witnesses saw me in town talkin to her regular, the last time not half a day before she went missin. They caught me three towns away, tryin ta hitch a ride to the port without even a sack over my shoulder. And I had her prize pretty in my pocket, a necklace she never took off." The knife stopped, and Jayne raised it to examine the edge. "And a knife with her blood on it. Think that'd be enough ta put a rope around my neck?"

-0-

Sister Nan came out of Lu Jian's bathroom with a soft, calf-length robe. She tossed it onto Lu's bed into the lap of his frightened bedmate, who lay cowering with the sheets pulled up to her collarbones. "Cover yourself, child. Go with this man into the next room and be quiet."

Lu sat up, placing his back against the headboard; the sheet dropped to his waist, revealing a hairless and rather doughy torso. "What's the meaning of this?" He demanded. "Who are you, and what do you think you're doing here?"

The man was trying hard, Nan thought, but it must be difficult to project authority after being awakened naked in the middle of the night by armed strangers. She said, "You already know who we are and what we want."

Lu looked from one to the other of the three people surrounding his bed: late-middle-aged, darkly clothed, and all wearing their hair in topknots high on the backs of their heads. He swallowed and said, "You have no authority here. You-"

One of the monks raised his laser pistol and fired. Lu screeched and nearly levitated out of the bed as the bedsheet between his legs burst into flame.

"Someone should put that out," Nan observed. Her nose wrinkled. "Never mind, the Minister has taken care of it for us."

"You shot me," Lu said wonderingly. Then, more firmly, "You _shot_ me."

Nan reached for the sheet and yanked it down. Brother Morris's shooting was as good as ever, she observed: he had put the pulse into the mattress between Lu's thighs just south of the man's privates, which were now tucked nearly into his abdomen. Rather like a rat's, she thought. "He did. Going to leave some burn scars, too. The next one will make a hole, or take something off. Nice thing about laser weapons, they cauterize their own wounds. If you're careful not to hit anything vital, you can empty your entire power cell into a man without killing him." She turned toward Brother Morris. "Did you bring spare power cells?"

The tall monk looked down into Lu's white-rimmed eyes. "Several."

"You know who we are and what we want," Nan repeated. "And we'll get it, we always do. Whether you're capable of rising from this bed ever again by the time we've extracted it is entirely up to you."

"I'm a loyal servant of the Alliance. I've done nothing wrong." At Nan's raised eyebrow he said, voice rising, "Everyone bends the rules out here. Everyone. It's the only way anything gets done. Perhaps some of my activities stretch the ethics laws a bit, but there's no harm done."

"Bending the rules. Like the Civil Service policies regarding … proper comportment?" Nan cocked an eye at the bedroom door.

Lu regained a bit of his composure. "She's a local hire," he said dismissively. "They have looser morals here."

 _So it's the woman's fault, is it? You have no idea how lucky you are, carpetbagger,_ Nan thought. _If Risa were here, she'd put a hole in you for that remark, and pray for you after._ "She's less than half your age, Minister, and rather pretty. I don't think relaxed mores goes very far towards explaining what she's doing here with you. She's your subordinate, I believe? Your 'personal assistant'?"

The man met Nan's eyes. In a level voice he said, "That woman is here entirely of her own free will."

"Oh, I'm sure you allowed her to freely choose between refusal and her career," the Templar 'nun' said. "Interesting as this conversation is, it's not why we're here. You're interfering with the activities of one of our people. I want to know why."

Lu wet his lips. "I was simply protecting the interests of a friend and business associate. I had no idea at the time that you people were involved. Frankly, it doesn't seem something you'd be interested in."

Very quietly, Nan asked, "Your 'business associate.' Simon Ames?"

"Yes," the minister said. "Simon Ames."

 _And there it is,_ Nan thought. _Selling a little girl's life to turn a profit, you and her own father._ She didn't have to look at her brothers to know their hands were tightening on the grips of their weapons; she could almost smell blood thickening the air, adding to the scent of burnt cloth.

Lu felt it too. "It was nothing personal," he said, voice rising. "Just business. I've been doing it for years."

Instantly, the charge in the air grounded out, leaving confusion behind. Nan said, "You've been doing what for years?"

"Restricting air traffic over the Wood," he said, puzzlement marking his face as well. "Ostensibly it's a safety concern – it _would_ be difficult to get someone out, if they made a forced landing in the middle of all that. And it gives us an excuse to inspect the vehicles that have legitimate business there."

"Inspect them for what?"

The man's confusion doubled. "Scanning devices. Survey equipment."

The Templars looked at one another. She said, "You're keeping craft from overflying the Wood on the chance they might be offering your friend some competition?"

Lu scowled. "You don't know, then."

The Templars stilled, waiting.

The minister swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing, and said, "It isn't about what someone else would find. It's what they wouldn't find. Those satellites haven't detected a new lode since Sime bought them. He's been 'shopping the maps, revealing a few lodes a month, trying to keep prices under control. But the last of them near enough to the surface to be mined at a profit are finally claimed. The Wood is played out. All Sime has left are the contracts he's working right now. When they're done, mining on New Home is finished. And if his asteroid venture isn't up and running by the time that happens, he'll be finished here as well. Not just not making money, _broke_. His creditors will pounce on him like wolves, and take whatever he has left."

Nan thought about that, while the silence stretched. "You know about his daughter."

"Of course. Everyone knows."

"And you know it's suspected she was taken into the Wood."

"I know what Sime suspects," the man said.

"And that he hired the crew of _Serenity_ to go in and get her?" _And that it will save your joint business venture if they fail?_

"What?" Lu's brows knitted. "No."

"Yes. The shuttle was supposed to provide support for the search party in the Wood." She waited, looking for his reaction. "If they can't find her, or find her too late because -"

"Wo di tien." Lu swung his legs off the bed. Morris's gun rose a few centimeters, but stopped when he glanced at Nan and saw her tiny hand signal: _wait_.

The minister reached toward a side table for his network com, a gadget called a 'phone' on some worlds. He pressed several buttons and put the device to his ear. He said crisply, "Derik. It's Lu. I need the lockdown on the shuttles from that tramp ship rescinded immediately. I … of _course_ I know what time it is. Those boats have to be cleared for flight by daybreak ... I know I just asked you to ground them. Things have changed, I'll explain later. Throw on some clothes and go to the office _now._ Fill out the documentation, fudge the inspection forms, whatever you need to push it through." Another pause. "I'll talk with him. Just have the form ready for his signature before dawn." He disconnected. "Buddha. Why didn't he _tell_ me?" He muttered.

He briskly punched in another number. Lu's fear seemed to have vanished as the task at hand filled his attention; he hardly seemed to be aware of the others in the room. Absently, he flipped the corner of the bedsheet over his lap as he began talking. "Antin. It's Jian. Sorry to wake you, but something urgent has come up. Derik is sending you some documents for signature, probably within the hour. No. No, they can't wait till morning, sorry, but the signature only needs to be electronic, you won't need to leave the house. I'll owe you for this. Yes, it's a very big deal, you can't imagine." He chuckled, then said, "Oh, I'd say it might be worth a small piece of the action. We'll discuss it tomorrow, eh? I have more calls to make." He disconnected. "Tan lan shagua," he muttered. "If his mother dropped her glasses and he picked them up, he wouldn't give them back without a finder's fee." He said to Nan, "Do you have a way to get the news to your … associate?"

She said, "I think it best if the message comes from you." She intended to send Derrial a message via his handheld Cortex link as soon as their business here was done, but his secretive handling of the device led her to believe that his crewmates didn't know about it. "And keep it on the low."

Lu nodded and made another call. "Wake up, you slug. I have a job for you. Yes, now. Out by Millersburg, there's a shop that does ship repairs … Frye's, that's it. There's a tramp freighter out there. It's the only ship outside the junkyard fence, you can't miss it. Go bang on the hatch until you wake somebody up, and tell them their shuttles are cleared to fly where they like. Got that? Repeat it back." He listened, nodding, then said, "Good. Don't waste time, they'll want to go at first light and I don't know how long they'll need to get ready." He hung up and looked at the people surrounding three sides of the bed. "Is that all this was about, really?"

 _My thought exactly,_ Nan thought. "No. we have other questions."

A short while later, the three Templars, weapons now hidden, came through the bedroom door into the spacious lounge, where the Minister's bedmate sat on a couch at the other end with the fourth monk standing over her. She looked quite vulnerable and altogether frightened. The robe, which rode up to her knees, was tucked between her thighs, as were her hands. She glanced at the intruders, then at the door. _An innocent coerced into Lu's bed,_ Nan wondered, _or an amoral climber trying to sleep her way up the ladder? Dangerous for her, either way._

Brother Morris touched her sleeve, and they paused just outside the door, still out of the girl's hearing. In a low voice he said, "What do you make of that?"

"I think Lu was sincerely helping his friend both times – when he grounded the shuttles and when he released them." She added, "It doesn't let Ames off the hook, certainly. There may be a reason he didn't tell his 'old friend' about the rescue party."

Morris nodded. "Someone to take the fall, if it was discovered that the Woodsman wasn't the one took the daughter."

She nodded and moved to the couch where the girl sat staring at them and the door beyond them."Fang shin, little one. You're in no trouble, at least not with us. And your … friend has come to no real harm." Nan stood in front of her and looked down. "Are you sure you know what you're getting into with him?"

The girl's head came up, and she looked straight into her captor's eyes, resentment showing through the fear. "Better than _you_." Nan was puzzled by the sudden shift, until some intuition told her that the backwater-born girl had recognized Nan's upper-class Londinium accent.

The girl went on, "My nephew is sick, something he was born with. He's six now, and it keeps getting worse. He needs treatment offworld, Inner Worlds medicine. My sister and her husband couldn't pay for it if they saved for twenty years. But last week, Jory was checked into a clinic on Persephone – nothing fancy, but fixing what he's got doesn't take fancy if you live on the right side of the Border. Jian arranged everything, even passage, and lodging for Jan and Mark nearby while he's being treated. They didn't have to spend a credit." She looked away. "I'm not a fool. I know it didn't cost him what it would have cost us – might not have cost him anything, just calling in some favors. But there was no help for us anywhere else." Her gaze dropped to her hands resting in her lap. "I owe him more than I can ever pay back with money. I suppose I should be flattered, really."

"You know you won't satisfy your debt with a single payment." _You'll be his to do with as he pleases until he tires of you, or you decide you've paid enough. If I were you, child, I'd look for employment elsewhere as soon as your family comes back._

"This wasn't the first payment. I started leaving clothes here a week ago. I told you, I know what I've gotten into." The girl clasped her hands tightly in her lap. "He's not a bad man," she said, head still bowed. "A decent boss, too, better than some. I even like him a little."

Nan sighed softly, and felt herself nodding. "I presume your clothes are all in the bedroom. Someone can bring them out. Or you can go back in, if you want. We're done here."

The girl stood, gathered herself, and headed toward the bedroom door. When she opened it, Nan could see Lu still sitting on the edge of the bed, the burned sheet covering his lap. He looked up at the girl in the part-open doorway and said, "Nien ching da, are you all right?"

"Am _I_ all right?" She replied breathlessly. She stepped in, and the door shut.

Brother Morris shook his head. "She should have just signed a contract and let him put a collar round her neck. At least then she'd know when it was going to be over."

"He wouldn't have gone for that. He'd have had to give her up as his assistant. The Federal Officeworker's Guild is understandably touchy about letting bureaucrats own their secretaries." _And, whatever redeeming qualities he may have, Lu is a man who expects a return on his investments. All the Inner Worlders on the Rim are here to make a profit of some sort, even the Church._ She shrugged as she heard the hiss of the shower through the bedroom door. "Who's to say we wouldn't have done the same, were we in their place? Either of them?"

 _Everyone bends the rules here. It's how things get done._


End file.
